Squid is a caching proxy server designed to improve web delivery, reduce bandwidth consumption and give administrators control over network traffic. It handles requests from clients, retrieves resources from origin servers and stores reusable responses for subsequent requests.
The software is used by organisations, internet service providers and network administrators to manage web access and improve performance. It can operate as a forward proxy for clients or as a reverse proxy in front of websites and applications.
Squid combines caching with extensive access controls, authentication, traffic management and content adaptation. Its flexible configuration also supports cache hierarchies, allowing multiple proxy servers to cooperate when retrieving and delivering content.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- HTTP caching – stores reusable responses in memory and on disk to reduce repeated requests to origin servers.
- Forward proxy operation – handles web requests from browsers and other network clients.
- Reverse proxy functionality – accelerates websites by caching content in front of origin servers.
- Access control lists – restrict requests according to clients, destinations, protocols and other configurable conditions.
- Proxy authentication – supports authentication schemes and external authentication helpers.
- Cache hierarchies – cooperates with parent, sibling and peer caches to improve content delivery.
- HTTPS support – tunnels encrypted connections and provides configurable TLS inspection when enabled.
- Content adaptation – integrates with ICAP and eCAP services for inspecting or modifying HTTP traffic.
- Bandwidth management – uses delay pools and traffic policies to control network resource consumption.
- Header manipulation – controls selected HTTP request and response headers.
- IPv6 support and asynchronous DNS resolution using an internal resolver.
- Customisable access logging, cache statistics and management facilities.
- Custom error pages and localisation facilities.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: www.squid-cache.org
Support:
Developer: Squid Software Foundation and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Squid is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Web Caches | |
|---|---|
| Vinyl | Web accelerator written with performance and flexibility in mind |
| HAProxy | High availability load balancer and proxy server |
| nginx | Very powerful and efficient web server and reverse proxy |
| Traffic Server | High-performance building block for cloud services |
| Memcached | Distributed memory object caching system |
| Squid | High-performance proxy caching server and web cache daemon |
| Envoy | High performance edge and service proxy |
| nuster | High-performance HTTP proxy cache server |
| Apache | Hugely popular web server with caching modules |
| Souin | HTTP cache system |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Web Delivery Tools | |
|---|---|
| Vinyl HTTP Cache | Web accelerator written with performance and flexibility in mind |
| Traffic Server | HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0 compliant caching proxy server |
| Squid | High-performance proxy caching server and web cache daemon |
| Tinyproxy | Lightweight web proxy daemon |
| Privoxy | Non-caching Web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities |
| Polipo | Caching HTTP proxy which has modest resource needs |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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