Squid or browser cache?

[Maccess]

Hi, this question is for the Unix heads.

Which would be better?

Use the browser's existing cache management system.

...or use Squid running as a background process and switch off the browser's cache.

I'm leaning more towards using Squid with multiple browsers since there would be a common cache, like the old Connectix Surf Express for Mac OS.

However, I noticed that with a DSL connection, it is actually slower accessing from the surf Express cache than the website itself.

I was wondering if this is true with Unix and Mac OS X in particular.

[FreeBSDee]

I've done this before to test how effective refresh patterns are. I ran Squid on a FreeBSD VMWare image. It's fast if you set your refresh_pattern properly. YMMV

I've had best results by having the percent line high on all media objects (images & audio):

refresh_pattern \.gif$ 10080 90% 43200
refresh_pattern \.jpg$ 10080 90% 43200
refresh_pattern \.jpeg$ 10080 90% 43200
refresh_pattern \.wav$ 10080 90% 43200
etc

for static pages:
refresh_pattern \.html$ 480 50% 22160
refresh_pattern \.htm$ 480 50% 22160

Don't cache dynamically generated pages like PHP and ASP or if you do, the min should be 0 or enough so you don't cache expired pages.

If you have ram to spare, you can play around with it.