Can Pfsense+squid cache game updates ?

[strike101]

recently installed  a Pfsense server on my LAN… got about 10 pc's here  and i'm wondering if squid will store Game updates / patches ?

Steam games ( Dota2 / Counterstrike Global Defense / CoD patches and DLC's )
MMORPG games auto updates ?

Thanks

[mianosm]

@strike101:

recently installed  a Pfsense server on my LAN… got about 10 pc's here  and i'm wondering if squid will store Game updates / patches ?

Steam games ( Dota2 / Counterstrike Global Defense / CoD patches and DLC's )
MMORPG games auto updates ?

Thanks

I would also be very interested in this if it is possible. Steam updates do happen via HTTP/HTTPS I thought - just HTTP/HTTPS on very high ports. This would be hugely useful during LAN events for sure.

[strike101]

I've seen guide Pfsense + Lusca cache… but they are all outdated

[atech]

I think the key to doing this would be in knowing the details of the game update servers. http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Squid_Package_Tuning gives you an overview of how its done for windows, mac and anti-virus cached updates so i would assume that the same could be done for dota/css/cod, etc.

Hope this helps.

[ilumos]

To anyone reading this in the future, it is absolutely possible to cache Steam game updates.

These two guides use nginx reverse proxy

http://www.astrolox.com/2013/05/31/valve-steampipe-reverse-proxy/

http://blog.multiplay.co.uk/2013/04/caching-steam-downloads-lans/

[sideout]

And it is not as straight forward as these documents seem.  I have done this successfully by:

1. Installing a windows server running DHCP / DNS due to limitations of using PFSense
2. Install Ubuntu and nginx on a seperate server.
3. Setup a DNS zone for *.cs.steampowered.com on the Windows DNS server - do not do anything else otherwise Steam wont work.
4. Make sure your nginx config file has the right user to run the process. I just used root as it made permissions easier
5. Make sure you have the applicable directories created as well for nginx.

I tested and it does cache the games.  I do notice that when one person starts it gives them whatever bandwidth you allocated then when another starts caching it gives them about half of that bandwidth.  This is for the 1st time caching.  When doing a local cache to a system it will give it 15mbit to 40mbit of bandwidth when coming from the server.

I have an HP DL 360 G5 with 8G RAM , Xenon Quad Core CPU , bonded gigabit NIC's , SmartArry 4200 256MB cace with a 250G RAID 5 Array on SAS drives (10K RPM) for my Nginx.

I am going to be testing at a LAN party this weekend.