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Ya but the major point of the article was to point out that certain things Squid does ostensibly to improve performance actually end up being counterproductive.

Ya but the major point of the article was to point out that certain things Squid does ostensibly to improve performance actually end up being counterproductive. Do you disagree with that? According to your logic, since more people use Windows, it is clearly a better engineered piece of software than Linux, right?

SwellJoe 16y ago
The things that Squid does to improve performance do improve performance on many platforms and for many workloads. This is demonstrable, and was supported by evidence at the time the changes were made. Squid didn't spring up from nothing yesterday. It was developed over a decade by a number of very smart people. Do they improve performance on the latest version of Linux in the particular workloads for which Varnish is designed? Probably not. "According to your logic, since more people use Windows, it is clearly a better engineered piece of software than Linux, right?" Where do you see me stating that popularity equals better engineering? My only comments about popularity were about the motivations of the Varnish developer in his criticisms of Squid. But, I would argue that one of the reasons Squid is more popular than Varnish (and any other proxy cache) is that it works in so many situations and does so many things. It doesn't have to do with engineering, at all, but answering the needs of a broad spectrum of people. It also helps that it has reliably been answering the needs of a broad spectrum of people for over a decade. Squid is a goddamned institution, and while there's plenty of room for other proxy caching tools, like Varnish, it pisses me off to see folks hurling pointless abuse at people I know to be extremely good software developers (two of whom probably have written an awful lot of code in places that everybody here uses on a regular basis...if you use Ubuntu, for example).
- astine 16y ago
  Isn't Squid like, 5 or 6 years older than any other open sourced proxy cache? That would make it more popular for the same reason that Apache is more popular than other open sourced webservers: name recognition? I remember that for a while, the Squid was the only proxy cache of which I knew. and the only one I had ever attempted to install.
  - SwellJoe 16y ago
    Squid's ancestor (a caching component of the Harvest project) was the first web proxy cache, period. One of its developers (Peter Danzig) went on to NetApp and produced the NetCache, which was the first commercial proxy cache. The Open Source option predated the commercial variant by a couple of years. There have been numerous proxy caches that have come and gone in those years, and there will likely be numerous that come and go while Squid continues doing its thing. "That would make it more popular for the same reason that Apache is more popular than other open sourced webservers: name recognition?" Do you really believe name recognition is the only reason Apache is the most popular web server? It doesn't have anything to do with the huge array of capabilities that Apache has that no other web server has? Or the broad ancillary tools support? Or the huge pool of knowledge available for it? Or that it is proven reliable? Or that it can safely be expected to exist and still be a viable option in five or ten years? But, to answer your question of whether I think Squid is popular for the same reason (or reasons, as I believe is the case) Apache is popular: Yes. Squid is popular for exactly the same reasons Apache is popular. It is a reliable product that serves a wide variety of users very well. It is well-maintained and has a long history of being well-maintained. It is well-understood by a lot of people, so it's not going to be neglected or a source of contention if the IT guy moves to another job. It is fast enough for a lot of uses. It is extensible via a number of scriptable access points, so developers can easily make it do what they need it to do. And, despite the accusations of horrible design, it has proven itself to be quite resilient. The number of security issues in Squid, for example, has been truly miniscule in the past decade. The funny thing is how many people are acting as though Varnish is going to somehow take the place of Squid as soon as people realize that Varnish is "better". For one small subset of problems for which Varnish is specifically built, it may make sense. But, for a huge array of other proxy and caching problems, Varnish isn't even a contender. I should maybe explain that my first company was a web caching proxy company, building products based on Squid. I deployed Squid several thousand times over seven years. Varnish would have worked in maybe a few dozen of those deployments. Squid solves a ridiculous array of problems, even though it solves none of them as well as a purpose built application could solve any one of them. Varnish solves its handful of problems very well...and does nothing for all the rest of the use cases.
    - 16y ago
lsc 16y ago
eh, from a SysAdmin point of view, popularity and familiarity are reasonable arguments. Certainly not the only arguments you should take into account, but the ease with which I can hire people who know the system, and the ease with which I can use a search engine to find answers to my problems is very relevant. I can't say I've been using squid for 10 years constantly, but I've used it on and off for 10 years. Just about any reasonably experienced sysadmin has used it some. Caching problems can be a little tricky, and having someone experienced with the caching system when something goes wrong can help a lot. I'd say squid is a bit like NFS. It's not the best system possible in theory, but goddamnit, it's been tested to hell and back in systems much larger than I'm dealing with, and we know where all the problems lie. (Also note, I believe Windows is only more popular on the desktop; Windows has never been a majority player in terms of webservers and other public Internet infrastructure, unless you count private intranets. in the public Internet server space, windows is fighting with sun and apple for the scraps. Linux is the big player here. )
- astine 16y ago
  "(Also note, I believe Windows is only more popular on the desktop; Windows has never been a majority player in terms of webservers and other public Internet infrastructure, unless you count private intranets. in the public Internet server space, windows is fighting with sun and apple for the scraps. Linux is the big player here. )" No, you'd be surprised. Windows, (running IIS) actually has about a quarter to a third of the public webserver market share: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/07/16/july-2010-web-server-survey-16.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/07/16/july-2010-web-s... ASP.NET is actually very popular.
  - lsc 16y ago
    huh. so it does have a reasonable lead on sun and apple. Still, according to that graph, IIS has something less than half the market share apache does. (I know you /can/ run apache on windows, I just don't know anyone who does.)

SwellJoe 16y ago

The things that Squid does to improve performance do improve performance on many platforms and for many workloads. This is demonstrable, and was supported by evidence at the time the changes were made. Squid didn't spring up from nothing yesterday. It was developed over a decade by a number of very smart people. Do they improve performance on the latest version of Linux in the particular workloads for which Varnish is designed? Probably not. "According to your logic, since more people use Windows, it is clearly a better engineered piece of software than Linux, right?" Where do you see me stating that popularity equals better engineering? My only comments about popularity were about the motivations of the Varnish developer in his criticisms of Squid. But, I would argue that one of the reasons Squid is more popular than Varnish (and any other proxy cache) is that it works in so many situations and does so many things. It doesn't have to do with engineering, at all, but answering the needs of a broad spectrum of people. It also helps that it has reliably been answering the needs of a broad spectrum of people for over a decade. Squid is a goddamned institution, and while there's plenty of room for other proxy caching tools, like Varnish, it pisses me off to see folks hurling pointless abuse at people I know to be extremely good software developers (two of whom probably have written an awful lot of code in places that everybody here uses on a regular basis...if you use Ubuntu, for example).

astine 16y ago
Isn't Squid like, 5 or 6 years older than any other open sourced proxy cache? That would make it more popular for the same reason that Apache is more popular than other open sourced webservers: name recognition? I remember that for a while, the Squid was the only proxy cache of which I knew. and the only one I had ever attempted to install.
- SwellJoe 16y ago
  Squid's ancestor (a caching component of the Harvest project) was the first web proxy cache, period. One of its developers (Peter Danzig) went on to NetApp and produced the NetCache, which was the first commercial proxy cache. The Open Source option predated the commercial variant by a couple of years. There have been numerous proxy caches that have come and gone in those years, and there will likely be numerous that come and go while Squid continues doing its thing. "That would make it more popular for the same reason that Apache is more popular than other open sourced webservers: name recognition?" Do you really believe name recognition is the only reason Apache is the most popular web server? It doesn't have anything to do with the huge array of capabilities that Apache has that no other web server has? Or the broad ancillary tools support? Or the huge pool of knowledge available for it? Or that it is proven reliable? Or that it can safely be expected to exist and still be a viable option in five or ten years? But, to answer your question of whether I think Squid is popular for the same reason (or reasons, as I believe is the case) Apache is popular: Yes. Squid is popular for exactly the same reasons Apache is popular. It is a reliable product that serves a wide variety of users very well. It is well-maintained and has a long history of being well-maintained. It is well-understood by a lot of people, so it's not going to be neglected or a source of contention if the IT guy moves to another job. It is fast enough for a lot of uses. It is extensible via a number of scriptable access points, so developers can easily make it do what they need it to do. And, despite the accusations of horrible design, it has proven itself to be quite resilient. The number of security issues in Squid, for example, has been truly miniscule in the past decade. The funny thing is how many people are acting as though Varnish is going to somehow take the place of Squid as soon as people realize that Varnish is "better". For one small subset of problems for which Varnish is specifically built, it may make sense. But, for a huge array of other proxy and caching problems, Varnish isn't even a contender. I should maybe explain that my first company was a web caching proxy company, building products based on Squid. I deployed Squid several thousand times over seven years. Varnish would have worked in maybe a few dozen of those deployments. Squid solves a ridiculous array of problems, even though it solves none of them as well as a purpose built application could solve any one of them. Varnish solves its handful of problems very well...and does nothing for all the rest of the use cases.
  - 16y ago

lsc 16y ago

eh, from a SysAdmin point of view, popularity and familiarity are reasonable arguments. Certainly not the only arguments you should take into account, but the ease with which I can hire people who know the system, and the ease with which I can use a search engine to find answers to my problems is very relevant. I can't say I've been using squid for 10 years constantly, but I've used it on and off for 10 years. Just about any reasonably experienced sysadmin has used it some. Caching problems can be a little tricky, and having someone experienced with the caching system when something goes wrong can help a lot. I'd say squid is a bit like NFS. It's not the best system possible in theory, but goddamnit, it's been tested to hell and back in systems much larger than I'm dealing with, and we know where all the problems lie. (Also note, I believe Windows is only more popular on the desktop; Windows has never been a majority player in terms of webservers and other public Internet infrastructure, unless you count private intranets. in the public Internet server space, windows is fighting with sun and apple for the scraps. Linux is the big player here. )

astine 16y ago
"(Also note, I believe Windows is only more popular on the desktop; Windows has never been a majority player in terms of webservers and other public Internet infrastructure, unless you count private intranets. in the public Internet server space, windows is fighting with sun and apple for the scraps. Linux is the big player here. )" No, you'd be surprised. Windows, (running IIS) actually has about a quarter to a third of the public webserver market share: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/07/16/july-2010-web-server-survey-16.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/07/16/july-2010-web-s... ASP.NET is actually very popular.
- lsc 16y ago
  huh. so it does have a reasonable lead on sun and apple. Still, according to that graph, IIS has something less than half the market share apache does. (I know you /can/ run apache on windows, I just don't know anyone who does.)