Re: hierarchy_stoplist and direct requests

Reuben Farrelly wrote:

> 929891506.127 962 192.168.168.18 TCP_MISS/200 17 GET
> http://www.dogpile.com/c
> gi-bin/ - TIMEOUT_DEFAULT_PARENT/whale.telstra.net -
>
> Why did the request go through this peer?

Because of two reasons.

* You use never_direct. Requests matching never_direct must use a parent
(or sibling hit). never_direct should only be used when you are inside a
firewall which denies direct connections.

* You also use prefer_direct off. This makes Squid prefer using a parent
than going direct regardless of any hierarchy stoplists or ICP timeouts.

never_direct is controlled by normal ACL checks. It's counterpart is
always_direct which forces requests to go direct.

The configuration I recommend for you is to remove both prefer_direct
and never_direct from your squid.conf. Squid will then automatically
bypass the hierarchy on requests which are considered uncachable.

If you added prefer_direct off or never_direct because your Squid did
bypass the hierarchy to much, then see my Squid page
<http://hem.passagen.se/hno/squid/> for a couple of related patches.

--
Henrik Nordstrom
Spare time Squid hacker