[squid-users] CLIENT_MAX_AGE: how does it work

Hi,
Can someone tell me (or point me to the right resource about) how
CLIENT_MAX_AGE works?

As I understand it a client request is able to state that it won't
accept as fresh something which has an age greater than a certain value.

So taking this into account, if I run a reverse proxy with a big max_age
and I client says CLIENT_MAX_AGE little, the object in my cache will be
considered as stale for that request.

1. Does that mean that the object is going to be fetched from the
original server?

2. More importantly does that means that the cached object with a big
age is going to be re-cached?

3. If yes to the last question, what happens if the origin server is
down? Would I lose my object in the cache even though other clients
without a CLIENT_MAX_AGE header would not consider it stale?

4. Is there a way to ignore CLIENT_MAX_AGE in a reverse proxy set up?

I think I'm a bit confused on the whole idea and any help would be
greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Eb.

-- 
Eric B. Blanchi