How does Proxy caching work

Web proxy

Caching is a way to store requested Internet objects (e.g. data like web pages) 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 Internet service providers to increase speed to
their customers, and LANs that share an Internet connection. Because it is also a proxy (i.e. it
behaves like a client on behalf of the real client), it can provide some anonymity and security.
However, it also can introduce significant privacy concerns as it can log a lot of data including
URLs requested, the exact date and time, the name and version of the requester's web browser
and operating system, and the referer.

A client program (e.g. browser) either has to explicitly specify the proxy server it wants to use
(typical for ISP customers), or it could be using a proxy without any extra configuration:
"transparent caching", in which case all outgoing HTTP requests are intercepted by Squid and all
responses are cached. The latter is typically a corporate set-up (all clients are on the same LAN)
and often introduces the privacy concerns mentioned above.

Squid has some features that can help anonymize connections, such as disabling or changing
specific header fields in a client's HTTP requests. Whether these are set, and what they are set to
do, is up to the person who controls the computer running Squid. People requesting pages
through a network which transparently uses Squid will usually have no idea if this information is
being logged.[3]

How does Reverse proxy work

The above set-up—caching the contents of an unlimited number of webservers for a limited
number of clients—is the classical one. Another set-up is "reverse proxy" or "webserver
acceleration" (using http_port 80 accel vhost). In this set-up, the cache serves an unlimited
number of clients for a limited number of—or just one—web servers.

As an example, if slow.example.com is a "real" web server, and www.example.com is the Squid

cache server that "accelerates" it, the first time any page is requested from www.example.com,
the cache server would get the actual page from slow.example.com, but later requests would get
the stored copy directly from the accelerator (for a configurable period, after which the stored
copy would be discarded). The end result, without any action by the clients, is less traffic to the
source server, meaning less CPU and memory usage, and less need for bandwidth. This does,
however, mean that the source server cannot accurately report on its traffic numbers without
additional configuration, as all requests would seem to have come from the reverse proxy. A way
to adapt the reporting on the source server is to use the X_HTTP_FORWARDED_FOR HTTP
header reported by the reverse proxy, to get the real client's IP address.

It is possible for a single Squid server to serve both as a normal and a reverse proxy
simultaneously.