[squid-users] performance issues Please help

I was wondering if someone could help me with some performance issues?

Our performance is not what I think it should be.
And after awhile it slows down.

I am running Redhat 8
Intell P3 server with 1gig Ram
I am running Squid Version 2.5.Stable5

with options ./configure --enable-storio=diskd,ufs --enable-gnurex

We have on average between 250 and 500 connections to the internet at one
time durring school hours.

We have one full (not a fractional) T1 line to our ISP.

We are using a 2500 Watchguard Firewall and the squid box is sitting on a
(DMZ or optional side of the firewall)

The clients hit the firewall and the firewall sends the http traffic to the
squid box.

Some conf details

cache_mem 250 MB
# cache_swap_low 90
# cache_swap_high 95
maximum_object_size 14096 KB
# maximum_object_size_in_memory 8 KB
# ipcache_size 1024
# ipcache_low 90
# ipcache_high 95
cache_replacement_policy lru
memory_replacement_policy lru
cache_dir ufs /data/squid/var/cache 80000 16 256
# log_ip_on_direct on

lines with # are default.

Store Directory Statistics:
Store Entries : 3689485
Maximum Swap Size : 81920000 KB
Current Store Swap Size: 46268484 KB
Current Capacity : 56% used, 44% free
Store Directory #0 (ufs): /data/squid/var/cache
FS Block Size 4096 Bytes
First level subdirectories: 16
Second level subdirectories: 256
Maximum Size: 81920000 KB
Current Size: 46268484 KB
Percent Used: 56.48%
Filemap bits in use: 3687088 of 4194304 (88%)
Filesystem Space in use: 46985560/117922124 KB (40%)
Filesystem Inodes in use: 3689846/14991360 (25%)
Flags: SELECTED Removal policy: lru
LRU reference age: 195.80 days

Squid Object Cache: Version 2.5.STABLE5-20040420
Start Time: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 23:22:44 GMT
Current Time: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 15:26:03 GMT
Connection information for squid:
        Number of clients accessing cache: 3
        Number of HTTP requests received: 788280
        Number of ICP messages received: 0
        Number of ICP messages sent: 0
        Number of queued ICP replies: 0
        Request failure ratio: 0.00
        Average HTTP requests per minute since start: 328.0
        Average ICP messages per minute since start: 0.0
        Select loop called: 23164260 times, 6.225 ms avg
Cache information for squid:
        Request Hit Ratios: 5min: 46.7%, 60min: 50.3%
        Byte Hit Ratios: 5min: 19.0%, 60min: 22.4%
        Request Memory Hit Ratios: 5min: 0.4%, 60min: 0.8%
        Request Disk Hit Ratios: 5min: 32.1%, 60min: 34.7%
        Storage Swap size: 46185448 KB
        Storage Mem size: 255952 KB
        Mean Object Size: 12.54 KB
        Requests given to unlinkd: 21702
Median Service Times (seconds) 5 min 60 min:
        HTTP Requests (All): 0.12106 0.10281
        Cache Misses: 0.30459 0.28853
        Cache Hits: 0.00919 0.00678
        Near Hits: 0.19742 0.18699
        Not-Modified Replies: 0.00179 0.00179
        DNS Lookups: 0.00278 0.00278
        ICP Queries: 0.00000 0.00000
Resource usage for squid:
        UP Time: 144198.544 seconds
        CPU Time: 3084.180 seconds
        CPU Usage: 2.14%
        CPU Usage, 5 minute avg: 5.98%
        CPU Usage, 60 minute avg: 6.03%
        Process Data Segment Size via sbrk(): 664610 KB
        Maximum Resident Size: 0 KB
        Page faults with physical i/o: 200238
Memory usage for squid via mallinfo():
        Total space in arena: 664610 KB
        Ordinary blocks: 664601 KB 41 blks
        Small blocks: 0 KB 0 blks
        Holding blocks: 2760 KB 3 blks
        Free Small blocks: 0 KB
        Free Ordinary blocks: 8 KB
        Total in use: 667361 KB 100%
        Total free: 8 KB 0%
        Total size: 667370 KB
Memory accounted for:
        Total accounted: 573691 KB
        memPoolAlloc calls: 113950836
        memPoolFree calls: 101771008
File descriptor usage for squid:
        Maximum number of file descriptors: 1024
        Largest file desc currently in use: 229
        Number of file desc currently in use: 223
        Files queued for open: 0
        Available number of file descriptors: 801
        Reserved number of file descriptors: 100
        Store Disk files open: 15
Internal Data Structures:
        3685496 StoreEntries
         54433 StoreEntries with MemObjects
         54370 Hot Object Cache Items
        3683103 on-disk objects
Received on Thu Apr 22 2004 - 09:59:04 MDT