032 | Proxy Servers in Action: Squid — A Caching Proxy for Traffic Optimization

24.06.2025

We’ve reached the final article in our proxy server series, and today’s topic is a true veteran and classic — Squid. This powerful proxy server has served for decades as a key tool for web traffic caching, significantly speeding up internet access and reducing network load.

What is Squid?

Squid is free, open-source software that functions as a caching proxy server for web traffic. It was specifically designed to optimize HTTP and HTTPS traffic, though it also supports FTP and Gopher protocols. Squid is primarily used as a forward proxy in corporate or academic networks but can also be configured as a reverse proxy to cache content from internal web servers.