Using squid
 

I use a dial up connection. May be my service provider has a caching server. But can i use squid on my computer to cache pages. I need some help with configuration.

A standard install of squid would fit your needs.
Take a look at
http://www.labtestproject.com/linux_...fedora_11.html

Thanks for your reply. But I have already installed squid, and its up and running. I have done only basic configuration such as,

visible_hostname [hostname]
http_access allow all

I dont much understand the topics such as
1> dns
2> cache management
3> blocking of websites

could you pls help me out with this.

Also will it increase my browsing speed, since i ve heard that my browser has a cache, and my service provider also has at least one.
Is is not redundant to use another standalone caching server only for myself.

Whether your isp has or does not have a caching server is, or ought to be, irrelevant. The bottleneck is your slow dial-up link, assuming that it is a standard dial-uup link and you are not, eg, using a dial-up protocol over a fast link. Tghe distiction is between stuff on the local side of the slow dial-up link and stuff on the remote side.

Everything on the remote side can be assumed to work with infinite speed (...it doesn't but...) as the dial-up link is so much slower the speed of the far side should not come into the equation.

...yes , you can....but

#
The service oproviser cache is irrelevant (unless it gives errors, which is an entirely different topic), but it is true that your browser has a cache. If you only use a single browser and if it is a single user machine (or this side of the slow dial-up link is single user) and if your browser has enough cache and uses it sensibly, then just using an external cache such as squid probably won't help appreciably.

As you haven't said anything about your environment or needs, the only thing I can say is that there are many aspects of configuration that you make to suit your environment. This is the first mention of blocking of websites; you don't say whether you do or do not want to do it (and if it is a single-user machine, why would you be wanting to block yourself from certain websites....you could just not go to them).

If you do not understand the Domain Name System, I suggest a short course of googling is in order (or read a book...there are a number of good ones). If you mean there is some issue about a Domain Name System server and the advantages (or otherwise) of caching the results of DNS lookups, I think that I should comment that Bind, the 'default' DNS server is probably somewhat more complex than you need or can currently understand, and that there are simpler options out there (...good wiki page!) and it probably (that environment again) doesn't do what you think that you would like, but maybe pdnsd does (although you only think that because you haven't yet understood the system, but that's by the by).

'Cache management': what is your question? If it is 'what manual tasks do I have to do, for housekeeping of the cache' the answer is that, eg, squid, takes care of that. If your question is something else, please explain.

BTW, it is possible that squid is not the best option for you, but in the same way that squid only offers you a marginal advantage over the browser's inbuilt cache, it is quite possible that an even more marginal advance over something that you already have installed is now far from worthwhile.

Thank you for taking time to reply. I know very little about the topic , so my questions are not that specific.

Could you pls explain:

Because the service provider cache is used by many, so then having a personal cache irrelevant.


Regards.

Check:

http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/config/

if you need further assistance let me know.

you still are not explaining what you want to know very clearly, so I'll have to guess what you mean:

(sorry about my inept typing)
From the outside, the service provider gives you back the data that you have asked for. Whether it does that by having a cache or not and whether that cache is squid, or not, is not something that should make any difference to how the data appears to you.

You've asked for the data; you get it. End of.

This is an incorrect statement; having a personal external cache may be irrelevant (see the earlier post which addresses exactly that issue) but not because the service provider cache is used by many. Their cache, if it exists, is the other side of a very slow link. It is this very slow link that causes (nearly) all of the slow down. Things that happen on the other side of this link cannot help you with speed if this very slow link is the problem.

To speed things up, even with this very slow link, you need some level of caching on your side of this very slow link, otherwise your speed will be limited all of the time, by this very slow link.

Your browser will have some level of caching, which may well do all that it is possible to do to improve your speed in the face of the slowdown caused by the very slow link.

If it does already do all that is possible, then another cache cannot do anything to speed things up. If, however, the browser cache does not do as much as is possible to speed up your apparent data rate in the face of the very slow link, there may still be some possibility that an external cache will help.

PS: I need to make the point that the dial up link is slow, if I haven't done that already.

Thanks again.

Having read your posts i really think i am weak at the concepts about how internet works. I was just trying to improve the speed of my connection by locally storing and managing redundant data locally using squid. I will assume thats not possible, in fact i have practically tried it with almost no gain in speed.

If you did not have any caching n your browser, you probably would see a speed up, but you are comparing a situation in which you have one layer of caching to one in which you have two.

It would be possible for two layers of caching to work better than one, but it does rather depend on the one layer not working particularly well.