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As configuring cache settings for Squid is a complex topic, this page lists some real-world configuration examples for the web proxy in IPFire. Note that depending on the configuration squid, may use a large amount of memory.

A rule of thumb for memory allocation is: Cache size in memory + 20 MB per GB cache size on harddisk + number of filter processes * 4 MB .

Cache adjustment variations

Example # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
No. Clients 3-5 10 3-5 2-5 70 ? 10
No. Filter procs 1 7 30 7 42 50 10 70
CPU / RAM(GB) ALIX 2D13 / 256Mb Atom D330 / 2 AMD Sempron 2100+ / 2 Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GhZ / 4 Intel Celeron G1610 / 8 VM (4 cores on Xeon 5520) / 4 Pentium D 950 2 core 3.4 GHz / 3GB
RAM used by Squid (MB) 53 100 580 300 1261 ? 1587
Bandwidth (Mbps) 6 50 50 5 10 50 10
No. File descriptors 4096 256 4096 4096 1024 16384 4096
Memory cache Size (MB) 25 512 100 1024 2048 1965 25
Min. Object size (KB) 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Max Object size (KB) 4096 4096 4096 153600 131072 51200 4096
No. level 1 subdirs 16 16 16 16 16 64 16
Memory replacement policy heap LFUDA heap GDSF heap GDSF heap GDSF heap GDSF LRU heap GDSF
Cache replacement policy heap LFUDA heap LFUDA heap LFUDA heap LFUDA heap LFUDA LRU heap GDSF
HDD cache size (MB) 0 1 000 20 000 1 000 8 000 60 000 ?! 500

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  1. Depending on the squid addons enabled, such as SquidClamAV and the URL Filter, a high number of filter processes may be required on an otherwise small system.