RE: What if Squid goes down?

From: Barrie Hall <barrieh@dont-contact.us>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 12:08:59 +1100

This can be a real problem. I have encountered this both as a user and as a sys admin. Our ISP uses squid, approx 12 months ago they were having problems every few days. As a group of users we were constantly frustrated by this, most people simply left proxies OFF after a while. Eventually the problems at our ISP were fixed by using an (unspecified and totally transparent) load sharing arrangment between several large squids...

When I decided to implement squid on our local LAN I had some initial teething problems (silly config mistakes, etc). At first, I encouraged everyone to use the new cache. Every time I had a problem SOMEONE complained and everyone changed there proxy settings...Things have now settled down, now problems for 5 months, no complaints.

A simple, expensive and inelegant solution would be to have two machines, both with the same IP address, one connected to your LAN, the other on standby (physically disconnected from your network). If you have problems, unplug one and plug in the other...(Im sure there are other far more elegant solutions)

Barrie Hall
Senior Networks/Software Engineer
Aurora Communications Ltd
25A Paul St North, North Ryde
Sydney, Australia
barrieh@auroracomms.com.au

Hi, I work for an ISP and we are are about to setup SQUID as our PROXY
server. Now the proxy is fairly important for web surfing; if it
goes down, web surfing as a whole goes down unless users know how to
change their web settings to get out of proxy mode (not likely).

This is where I get stuck... If SQUID goes down, how do I notify 4 000 +
browsers that are on-line using the proxy, not to use it :) I have heard
of people using Jscripts... mind you I have never gotten an example of
one, so I'm not sure exactly how that works....

What are other poeple out there doing to avoid this kind of problem.

Chuck Pitre chuck@vianet.on.ca
ViaNet Internet Solutions Technical Consultant
128 Larch Street ph: 675-0400
P3E 5J8 fax: 675-0404
>--------------------------------------------------<

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Received on Tue Dec 09 1997 - 17:17:28 MST

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