Squid Proxy Cache Server

My main use case for Squid Proxy Cache Server  is as a filter. I use it as an add-on to pfSense firewall software, where I can create rules to permit users to browse certain content or restrict access. Squid Proxy Cache Server  is used not only to cache data but also to restrict permission to content.

Squid Proxy Cache Server positively impacts my organization because I can filter the internet content that users can access. This content filtering has improved security, increased productivity, secured the connectivity, and helped me meet compliance requirements.

The best features that Squid Proxy Cache Server offers may also be useful to other users. I find the access control feature stands out the most for me.

Squid Proxy Cache Server can be improved with maintenance packages, updates, and everything related to security. There could be more information, documentation, and support in Spanish regarding the needed improvements.

I have been using Squid Proxy Cache Server for approximately twenty years.

I rate this product an eight out of ten. I would have rated it a nine because I did not understand it before; it was a seven at that time. I mean that you need to tell me more about what I did not understand before my seven rating. I encourage you to move forward, but you need to improve your understanding of my pronunciation, as your support should extend beyond American citizens.

My main use case for Squid Proxy Cache Server  is to accelerate users' internet browsing experience. With Squid Proxy Cache Server  in place, all users pass through it, and browsers are configured to pass through Squid Proxy Cache Server, which means cached requests on Squid Proxy Cache Server deliver faster browsing experiences.

Squid Proxy Cache Server offers flexibility, ease of deployment, and scalability as its best features. Its flexibility and scalability have helped my team by making it easy to set up redundant Squid Proxy Cache Server instances and allowing for quick restoration on the fly. Squid Proxy Cache Server has positively impacted my organization by creating a better user experience. I have noticed the improvement in user experience through user feedback, improved network speed, and better usage of the available bandwidth, which saves company resources.

I cannot think of anything to improve about Squid Proxy Cache Server.

I have been using Squid Proxy Cache Server for 15 years.

Squid Proxy Cache Server is very stable.

I previously used a different solution before Squid Proxy Cache Server, which was Microsoft ISA, and I switched because of the robust features and scalability of Squid Proxy Cache Server.

I evaluated other options before choosing Squid Proxy Cache Server, such as ISA.

I would rate Squid Proxy Cache Server a nine out of ten. I rate it a nine because it is really good, and I have not seen too many other products that compare. Regarding Squid Proxy Cache Server's AI capabilities, I think it is a well-thought-out framework and certainly very useful in its application. In terms of Squid Proxy Cache Server's AI capabilities, I find it very accurate with really good outputs. My overall review rating for Squid Proxy Cache Server is nine.

I have been using Squid Proxy Cache Server  for nine years in my current company. Before that, I used it overseas from early 2008 to 2010, so I have approximately ten years of experience overall.

In our infrastructure, the main use case for Squid Proxy Cache Server  is serving server-side internet connectivity rather than user connectivity. When a server needs to access the internet, it uses Squid Proxy to do so, and we implement ACLs on the Squid server as well.

For example, we recently built a Microsoft server that needs to access the internet to patch, update, and perform other functions, and this is where Squid Proxy Cache Server really helps my team. We gather the information of the server source IP and the destination they want to access, such as abc.microsoft.com or xyz.microsoft.com. Then we create ACLs in the Squid configuration file with source and destination lists, attach them with the policy, and that is how we use it.

We have hundreds of servers in our environment, and I add to their requirements daily. Each server's requirement with Squid Proxy Cache Server is different, as they want to access different sites. We strictly control them, and it works both ways. It is both cache and internet control, mostly internet control.

In our environment, we use Squid Proxy Cache Server to control server-side access to the internet. On top of that, caching is also a benefit because the same cache is used by other servers. We download images from Microsoft, and if they are in the cache, the next download will be faster.

I have experience with Cyberoam as well, which also uses Squid as a caching server. Proxy servers have two components: one is caching, and another is internet access or URL database. The content or destination that has already been used can be saved in the cache. This is the best feature: cache in and cache out.

I used Squid Proxy Cache Server in my previous organization with delay pools to control bandwidth. We reviewed our MRTG or Cacti graphs before and after implementation, and after that implementation, we saw around twenty to twenty-five percent of internet traffic saved.

It is very difficult for us to determine if the twenty to twenty-five percent savings is from caching or from internet control. However, what we found is that before implementing Squid, we had around one hundred Mbps bandwidth utilization on average. I cannot remember the exact figures, but after that implementation, we found around seventy to eighty percent of internet utilization according to the graphs, while the user base and everything else remained the same. There was no degradation or employee shortage. Everything was as usual. Therefore, we feel that we saved around twenty percent bandwidth.

I did not use the AI capabilities of Squid Proxy Cache Server, but everything is moving toward AI. There should be some AI capabilities so that we can use delay pools or bandwidth quotas, and based on that, there should be auto-scaling. If the quota is filled, then additional chunks should be added to the quota automatically.

I would rate it ten if we had a dashboard or visible interface with Squid Proxy Cache Server. Because we are using third-party tools such as Cacti and MRTG to see utilization, and other third-party monitoring tools, there should be built-in tools in Squid so that we can measure performance and see results. If that were available, I would give it a ten.

I have not encountered any stability issues with Squid Proxy Cache Server so far. It is stable.

In our environment, we implemented scaling differently with Squid Proxy Cache Server. We did not implement anything inside Squid for scaling. Instead, we placed a load balancer in front of Squid Proxy, and when anything requires scaling, we simply add a new Squid Proxy behind the F5 load balancer. That is how we handle scaling. However, I believe there should be automatic scaling with AI. I have not tried that.

We never used the Webmin GUI for Squid Proxy Cache Server, but for a Linux expert, it is easy to control from the command line. I never have experience using the GUI. I have rarely used Webmin, but I did not discover how Webmin is useful. There should be a GUI interface or UI so that administrators can control it more easily.

I always thought Squid Proxy Cache Server is open source, so I never considered that there should be support. However, it would be great to have support similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux . Before it was open source, but later it became enterprise. Currently, I do not know if there is a professional support team available for Squid Proxy Cache Server, but it would be helpful.

So far, we have not needed to reach out for help regarding support for Squid Proxy Cache Server.

Before, we used Blue Coat Proxy, Cyberoam Proxy, Forcepoint, and other solutions. The reason we switched to Squid Proxy Cache Server is cost. Those professional proxy solutions have huge yearly cost involvement, and currently with Squid Proxy Cache Server, we are using it at no cost.

We evaluated a few solutions: Blue Coat, Cyberoam, and Squid, mostly these three. We found that Squid is the lowest-cost option. We also tried Forcepoint. We put Forcepoint, Blue Coat, Cyberoam, and Squid into a matrix and table, and based on all those factors, we found that Squid is good in terms of cost. We also conducted research and found that everybody uses Squid as their backend caching solution.

Squid Proxy Cache Server is deployed on-premises in our organization. We have approximately six Squid Proxy Linux machines, and we have an F5 load balancer that controls those six Squid Proxies. High availability can also be implemented, but we have not tried that.

I do not have specific data regarding return on investment with Squid Proxy Cache Server. However, in general, I feel it is useful. Mostly, I do not see any cost involved except for the hardware cost.

For our environment, we are using the free open source Squid Proxy Cache Server, so there is no licensing cost. Our only cost is for hardware, such as the Linux machine. In terms of costing, we do not feel much impact. It is very minimal.

I advise others looking into using Squid Proxy Cache Server that if they are proficient in Linux and have a good Linux administrator, they should go for it.

Everything is good regarding Squid Proxy Cache Server. I would just advise that there should be a professional web interface for Squid so that we can see the consumption of the proxy. My review rating for this product is eight out of ten.

My main use case for Squid Proxy Cache Server  is that it provides the proxy and also reverse proxy in some cases.

For a quick specific example of how I use Squid Proxy Cache Server  as a proxy or reverse proxy in my operations, the forward proxy is basically just NATing so that I can access websites from a particular domain. While for the reverse proxy, it acts as the connectivity for the backend servers which are not exposed to the internet. That is how it is built.

As a reverse proxy, the reverse proxy is basically exposing the IMAP server so that all the mail servers' ports are exposed via the reverse proxy, which are distributed across multiple availability zones.

The best features that Squid Proxy Cache Server offers include a lot of caching functionality, which is the best part, and then it is the security. I can also provide clustering between the proxies as caching servers, so multiple Squid Proxy Cache Server instances can act as a load balancer and content cache.

Regarding caching functionality or clustering, in some cases, I am an Internet Service Provider. For a group of customers, it makes sense to have this cached on the server so that all the files which are more or less static stay in the cache. This speeds up or boosts the connectivity and the downloading functionality for any website visiting, so majorly, it's a performance booster.

Squid Proxy Cache Server has positively impacted my organization because first of all, it's an open-source thing, so I don't really have to do anything special to buy the license. It comes default with Red Hat, and that is how we install on the servers. In my previous company, we were installing it on Fedora and Ubuntu . It's completely free and open source. The functionality, such as allowing a group of people to access particular websites and blocking websites, are all interesting for us. Sometimes, the government asks us to block some website pages and some zones, so along with the DNS blocking, we also block the HTTP content.

I think Squid Proxy Cache Server can be improved by having a nice front-end, one similar to Blue Coat for access management, view management, and direct configuration instead of doing it all through the CLI. It's best to have everything done through the GUI, which is what I think can improve the product.

I don't want to implement third-party GUIs on Squid Proxy Cache Server. So that's what would be on my wish list—that Squid Proxy Cache Server by itself provides a GUI, which will give more confidence to users.

I haven't actually used AI with Squid Proxy Cache Server, but I think it might be very interesting to have the AI capability built-in. However, I do think we need some GPU or something to boost the performance on Squid Proxy Cache Server as natively running. I think we need to add some GPU cards so that it works more natively with AI.

I don't have experience using AI features yet, but I think it would be great if it could do some live scanning of the websites that are getting blocked on a daily basis and perform some sampling analysis. Especially in the case of reverse proxy, if there are any attacks happening, it would be beneficial if it scrapes through its own log files and provides some nice dashboards showing where the attacks are coming from. That would be really great to have as a handy troubleshooting tool.

One more feature I would ask for is if AI can provide the best possible configuration and do a review of Squid Proxy Cache Server just to make sure that no other ports or anything by default are missed in configuration. It would also be great if the proxy server acts as a load balancer in a cluster mode that shares the cache, and the configuration is best set.

I have been using Squid Proxy Cache Server for more than four or five years.

Squid Proxy Cache Server is very stable.

The scalability of Squid Proxy Cache Server is that it can be horizontally scaled; you don't always need vertical scaling. Instead of one instance, you can put it behind the load balancer so that it can serve a huge amount of customers.

Customer support for Squid Proxy Cache Server comes from Red Hat, so that's good support for me with the premium support.

I previously used a different solution, specifically the Blue Coat proxy, which was end of life. With a lot of cost optimization, I switched to Squid Proxy Cache Server as a solution.

Squid Proxy Cache Server has positively impacted my organization because first of all, it's an open-source thing, so I don't really have to do anything special to buy the license. It comes default with Red Hat, and that is how we install on the servers. In my previous company, we were installing it on Fedora and Ubuntu . It's completely free and open source.

My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer; for example, we are not a partner or reseller.

I have seen a return on investment with Squid Proxy Cache Server because money is definitely saved. Also, the enterprise maintenance and having the hardware from the vendors, which is like a lock-in, makes it difficult to replace the hardware proxies nowadays, so it's interesting. If it's container-based, it can add further advantages.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we use it with the Red Hat solution, so it was only the subscription model which I had to take for Red Hat for the enterprise support. That is how it is today. However, since it's open source, it's not backed by an enterprise. Nonetheless, Red Hat support is sufficient as premium support.

I have seen a cost saving since implementing Squid Proxy Cache Server because then I don't have to really go for something such as a Blue Coat proxy. Earlier, I was using a Blue Coat proxy, but later on, I turned to Squid Proxy Cache Server and the cost was reduced. It's very handy for operations, and also the caching has improved, so this is my use case.

Before choosing Squid Proxy Cache Server, I evaluated other options, including NGINX  and the Apache solution.

I would advise others looking into using Squid Proxy Cache Server to focus on configuration optimization because there is huge potential when you do the optimization. The better you have configured Squid Proxy Cache Server, the very good potential it has for caching, security, and blocking break-ins. It's very nice. I give this product a rating of 8.