A caching engine usually installed on a remote server. Caching is a way to store requested Internet objects (i.e., data available via the HTTP, FTP, and gopher protocols) on a system closer to the requesting site. Web browsers can then use the local Squid cache as a proxy HTTP server, reducing access time as well as bandwidth consumption. This is often useful for ISPs to increase speed to their customers, also known as Web Server Acceleration, and LANs that share an Internet connection. Because it is also a proxy, it provides some anonymity and security.
Squid has been in development for many years and is very complete, robust, and open source (GPL). It supports many protocols, although it is primarily used for HTTP and FTP.
It has some features that can further help anonymize connections, such as disabling or changing specific header fields in a client's HTTP requests. See the documentation for header_access and header_replace for further details.
Another feature is something called "tranparant caching," a way to avoid configuring the client browser, with HTTP requests intercepted by squid.
Some support is available for TLS, SSL, and HTTPS.
Squid is able to run on the following operating systems:
Current stable version is 2.5
See also: Proxy | Web Browser
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