Re: What Sized Machine Would Be Appropriate Where I Am?

Hi,

> This fall (IE when school starts in 6-7 weeks) every single one of
> our dormitory rooms will be wired for Internet access, one port per
> pillow. We expect that 33% or 50% of our students will bring PCs with them
> to the dorm, so with a population of 2400 on-campus kids we're looking
> at... a potential increase to 3700 net users.
> Campus network is a mixture of slow and fast ethernet segments
> connected to an FDDI ring in some places, and 155 Mbit ATM in others.
> The question I have in mind is, given 3700 client machines, and a
> 10 Mbit pipe, what sized machine or machines would be appropriate
> platforms for running squid for our campus ?

You should take several other things into considarition:
- what the site policy is about use of caching proxy: is it optional or
mandatory, (perhaps transparent caching?)
- what kind of traffic you would like to cache?
- do you want to filter incoming objects (perhaps virus scanning)? do you
want to restrict access to certain sites?
- do you have any idea about the current traffic that is going to be fed
into your future cache(s)?

etc, etc.

Furthermore, taking a look at Peter Danzig's article could help you as
well: <URL:http://www.netapp.com/technology/level3/3029.html>. Although it
is primarily focused on NetCache, it includes rules of thumb about
deploying caches.

I don't know the details of your campus network and the caching policy -
that is why it is not easy to recommend a solution. PROBABLY a two-machine
setup would be enough.

Bertold
Received on Wed Jun 30 1999 - 05:21:59 MDT