[squid-users] Passing thru TOS headers to clients

Good day, Squid gurus

I've been reading the entire mailing list and another dozens of sites, links, articles but I couldn't find the response to my problem.

The big problem we all encounter (and by all I mean a great number of network administrators) is the quality of internet and the money we have to pay for it. So in order to mantain the balance we have to use all kind of mechanisms.
That's why we thinks SQUID is one of the greatest tools invented so far (and I must thank you for that). The situation we encounter here enables me to post this message here, on the developer mailing list.

I will expose my situation (but I must tell you that in this situation are thousands of users and administrators in my country) and I will refer to my network as a model:
- in my country there is a separation between motropolitan internet (the internet provided by local ISP's) and the external internet (the internet that comes from cross-border) in terms of bandwidth and price. For better understanding I wiil tell you that my subscription is 400euro+vat for 256kpps of external internet and 10mbps of metropolitan internet (as I've explained the difference the lines above).
- those bandwidths I must share to 50 users in the network
- in order not to have bottlenecks I've installed on the server HTB and I've made different classes for external and metropolitan internet
- the ISP has a mechanism of marking the packages as they come: if the packet comes from external internet it comes with 0x88 TOS; if the packet comes from metropolitan internet it comes with 0x00 TOS.
- so, the HTB makes the difference between TOS'es and distributes packages into those 2 classes as they came
- all is great so far, but the squid was impetuously necessary and I've put it on the server (as I've observed that there are many sites accessed constantly by many users). Ok so far
- Squid raised the quality of the internet but to one point when the traffic becomes constantly high and very heterogenous
- this was the moment when the problems appeared
- the situation I've encountered was the following: one of my users makes a request to an external site. He addresses to Squid proxy which makes the request for him. When the packages arrive back to Squid they come marked with 0x88 TOS and the Squid delivers them to user with 0x00 TOS (as if the request was made to the http standing on the local server). In this moment HTB captures those packages and instead of throwing them into external class it throws them into metropolitan class. This metropolitan class has greater minimal and maximal limits than external internet class. So the HTB doesn't work correctly and the bandwidth isn't shaped accordingly to the real trafic. Here appears the bottleneck
This event brings me into an deadlock: I must use HTB to shape the bandwidth in order to avoid bottlenecks but I also have to use SQUID to ease the traffic and provide quality internet (even thou the conditions are hard - low bandwith with high cost).

The solution that would solve the impasse: to use SQUID in accelerator mode and SQUID to pass thru the packages with TOS unchanged (if it is 0x88 before SQUID so it would be 0x88 after it and viceversa for 0x00).

I know that the Squid is an open-source application and I've tried to look at the sources, but my age doesn't permit me to take it from the begining and learn programming language, as I'm not a programmer, in order to discern the great stupendous application.

I've tried to contact several others younger administrators to make a brainstorming and to resolve the problem but it was in vain. They are not as skillful and experienced as you (they can't be as you've devoloped this application since 10 years or more) and they weren't able to make it thru.

I am absolutely convinced that your time is practically inexistent but I must tell you that this feature of SQUID would solve problems of thousands users here and crossborder as the provider is multinational company.

A feature like "pass_headers on" in conjunction with accelerator mode settings :) would be heaven !

Thank you for your time and please excuse me for being so circumstantial. I've exposed the real situation for you to see the real issue.

You could make our lives easier with just a drop of genius

Thank you all for the worderfull work you've developed and keep on the good work !


Yours truly,
Radu Ivesecerianu
48 years - Romania
SQUID admirer

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Received on Mon May 09 2005 - 02:33:17 MDT