In need of help to solve a bandwidth issue

luke240778

Just quickly.. what do you mean by 'disable' squid? I dont see a disable check bo like some other packages have.. do you mean just stop int binding to the interface? Mine currently binds to my LAN and OPT1 interface, and not my WAN interface..

podilarius

Sorry, just stopping it will disable it until reboot or until you start it again.

luke240778

Any idea how to STOP it? i have just done it a few times via the dashboard 'Services" widget, but it keeps just turning itself back on..

Cry Havok

Stop it and then remove the package. That will certainly keep it stopped ;)

luke240778

Um.. removing it is definately what i want to do.. i need squid running.. i am just trying to stop it so i can see if it is the problem, then i'll have to work out how to fix it..

As far as i know, squid is the only way i can cache alot of my clients usage and save bandwidth, that i desperately need to.. cause the costs of Bandwidth here in Brazil is really high.. need all the help i can get to save on bandwidth

luke240778

@luke240778:

Um.. removing it is definately not what i want to do.. i need squid running.. i am just trying to stop it so i can see if it is the problem, then i'll have to work out how to fix it..

As far as i know, squid is the only way i can cache alot of my clients usage and save bandwidth, that i desperately need to.. cause the costs of Bandwidth here in Brazil is really high.. need all the help i can get to save on bandwidth

podilarius

There should be a disable or enable check box in the config. check or uncheck it depending, save, and then stop the service. Once BW has seen to gone down, or stay the same, then reverse the steps.

luke240778

Have looked over and over and there isnt a disable or anything like that in the Proxy Server settings..

I have stopped the service with the widget on the dashboard, and straight away the WAN usage goes back down to match the LAN.. so i now know that it is somehow Squid causing the issue.. no idea why though. But, after a few seconds the bandwidth goes back up as the service restarts itself..

jikjik101

Try the Allow users on interface checkbox on the Proxy Server.

If you have squidguard, try to disable it also.

luke240778

No squidguard.

Wont the Allow users on interface stop the users from being able to access the web? And squid would still be running.. so probably still updating or doing whatever it is that is eating bandwidth

jikjik101

AFAIK, the Allow users on interface (if LAN is the selected interface) will only bypass the proxy if uncheck.

If this field is checked, the users connected to the interface selected in the 'Proxy interface' field will be allowed to use the proxy, i.e., there will be no need to add the interface's subnet to the list of allowed subnets. This is just a shortcut.

luke240778

I have found the issue.. i had some code as an advanced setting that i read on this tutorial on the pfSense forums, that is supposed to assist in caching Windows Updates.. apparently all it does is eat the bandwidth all day long.. i deleted this code, restarted Squid and i have been running all day without a problem.. Would have been nice if i could still use this code without issue.. as caching Windows updates for me would save alot of bandwidth.. do you guys know if there us a way to still use the following code but only allow it to use say 2mb of bandwidth to get updates? or only allow it to run very early in the morning?

Code:

podilarius

I don't think it applies in your case, but that is what a WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) is for.

luke240778

Yes i know, i am experienced as a windows admin, and using WSUS.. Has anyone else got their squid successfuly working as a type of WSUS and its not eating all the bandwidth?

Nachtfalke

Hi,

as said in the thread before. You are using squid. Did you compare the traffic which came in on WAN with the traffic that goes out on LAN ? If there is a big difference than you should optimize your squid cache so that squid stops downloading files when I client aborted a connection. I had a similar problem in the past but I could fix it. There were some hintes posted in the doc pointing to a posting of me.

To compare the traffic I just used the "Interface statistics" widget on the dashboard.

luke240778

Hi yes i was monitoring all traffic on both interfaces and this is how i found the problem at first.. I have fixed it now, but i definately would like the settings back there so that i can cache windows updates, it would save me alot of bandwidth..

Do you recall what you changed the code to to get it to keep working but not eating all the bandwidth?

I read somewhere that if i change the range_offset_limit to 0 instead of -1 then that would help.. what i would like is if i can tell squid to never use more than 2mbps of available bandwidth to get these updates.. The rest of the code, i dont entirely understand anyways..

Nachtfalke

Hi,

you can find tip about that in the pfsense docs.

Iam using squid for caching windows updates, too:

this is for caching all windows updates for 90 days

refresh_pattern -i .*microsoft\.com/.*\.(cab|exe|msi|msp) 129600 100% 129600 override-expire override-lastmod reload-into-ims ignore-reload ignore-no-cache ignore-private;
refresh_pattern -i .*windowsupdate\.com/.*\.(cab|exe|msi|msp) 129600 100% 129600 override-expire override-lastmod reload-into-ims ignore-reload ignore-no-cache ignore-private;

This is for aborting the download if less than 60% of file has been downloaded. If more than 60% has been downloaded, squid will finish downloading/caching.

quick_abort_pct 60;

This is neccessary that the command above will work:

range_offset_limit 0;

If you use:

range_offset_limit -1;

then squid ignores "quick_abort_" and is downloading the complete file bey default.

This is working without any problems for updates from Windows XP and Windows 2000. I could save much bandwidth in this scenario with these settings.

But I didn't see such an effect for Windows 7 updates.

luke240778

Thanks for that, great news.. Do you at all see any issues when your cache decides to update itself and use up all the bandwidth? That is what mine was doing..

Nachtfalke

@luke240778:

Thanks for that, great news.. Do you at all see any issues when your cache decides to update itself and use up all the bandwidth? That is what mine was doing..

Yes, in the past I had the problem that my cache started downloading files but no client has an open download/connection. So it was just squid which was downloading. I had sometimes a high difference that WAN has downloaded 8GB and LAN only 6GB.

But as I said in my post before I changed the custom options in squid and now it is working as it should: caching files but not downloading "useless" files.

luke240778

Well, i have inserted that code and will see how things go for a couple days.. thanks again!! it will indeed save alot of bandwidth.