Time for action – configuring Squid to ignore the browser reloads

There are three ways to fix this issue using http_port and refresh_pattern directives in the Squid configuration file. Please note that the refresh_pattern rules apply to both server and client headers and can pose issues if we ignore certain headers and clients may receive stale replies.

Using ignore-cc

We have seen the ignore-cc option in the HTTP port section previously. If we use this option while specifying the HTTP port, Squid will ignore the Cache-Control HTTP header from clients and will completely depend on the Cache-Control headers supplied by the backend web servers. For example:

http_port 80 accel defaultsite=example.com vhost ignore-cc

Using ignore-reload

Using the option ignore-reload with the refresh_pattern directive, we can completely ignore the browser reloads and serve the content from cache anyway. However, this may result in serving stale content in some cases. For example:

refresh_pattern .   0 20% 4320 ignore...