Re: Parents and Peers

Clement wrote:

> I suppose the difference between parents and peers is that
> when none of the parents and peers report a hit, one of the
> parent will be used.

Yes. The miss response times are multiplyed with the assigned weight and
the one with the lowest value is used.

> If squid still goes direct, what is the purpose of a parent?

To handle all request that may be cached, even if it is a miss.
 
The key point here is that Squid goes direct when it does not gain
anything by going throught a parent.

Squid goes direct on all
* POST/PUT request (uncacheable)
* Requests matching hierarchy_stoplist (assumed to be uncacheable)
* Pragma: no-cache requests (Reload) (I think these goes direct to
improve performance of the parents, as most reload requests end up in
the same object).

> The fact is, squid goes direct some times and use the parents
> some other times. Is there a method to force it to use the
> parents all the time?

If you are required to go throught a parent, then configure squid as
inside a firewall. When Squid is told that it is inside a firewall it
never goes direct for requests beyond the configured firewall area
(based on domain(s) and/or IP networks).

---
Henrik Nordström
Spareteim Squid Hacker