Re: [squid-users] auth_param ntlm children vs Site Size

Thanks for the reply :)

I did some basic math on the cache.log and came up with about 80
helpers we need. I will monitor both the cache.log + the general user
experience to see if this improves the situation.

Will report back with how it pans out... Again, thanks!

-Jason

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 9:28 PM, Amos Jeffries <squid3_at_treenet.co.nz> wrote:
> On 9/07/2012 9:13 p.m., Jason Leschnik wrote:
>>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Just curious about what size your user base is compared to how many
>> children processes you have for ntlm authentication. We found with
>> 1000-1500 users that 30 children was no enough, resulting in cache.log
>> queue warnings. So what combination have you found reasonable?
>
>
> For NTLM the theoretical ideal is about 4 helpers per active user (ouch!),
> just because of the extremely inefficient way it works. As you cut down the
> ratio of helpers:users from that the user-visible lag becomes longer. So yes
> a few dozen heleprs for a thousand users is nowhere near enough. It's not
> uncommon to see a few hundred NTLM helpers in one Squid instance for your
> user levels.
> Try making that 100 helper children and see what the loading is. The low
> numbered helepers will get a lot of requests tailing off to least load on
> the 100th helper.
>
> If you have a choice go for Kerberos instead or as first preference over
> NTLM.
>
> Amos
>

-- 
Regards,
Jason Leschnik.
[m] 0432 35 4224
[w@] jason dot leschnik <at> ansto dot gov dot au
[U@] jml974_at_uow.edu.au