Re: [squid-users] ncsa_auth and number of users

HeadsUp Support wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am using ncsa_auth to authenticate my users and
> everything is working fine. Is there any rule of thumb
> as to the number of users it can handle? Are we
> talking tens, hundreds, thousands or more.

Yes.

But more importantly, how long is a piece of string?

Seriously, I would expect an autenticated cache to serve up at least 2/3
the number of outgoing requests/second it could serve without auth
(those kinds of numbers have been discussed to death), and probably
quite a bit more. Authenticated use does lead to more client requests,
but the initial challenge-request is quite light-weight. The only way
to know for sure would be to benchmark it yourself.

I seem to recall Kinkie has some big boxes doing heavy loads with NTLM
authentication. His numbers seemed to be inline with what I expect from
a similarly equipped machine without authentication, so I reckon auth
isn't a major performance sink, thought it certainly has some impact.

-- 
Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com>
Web caching appliances and support.
http://www.swelltech.com