[wellylug] Squid, wpad.dat auto-configuration and the Air NZ booking service - RESOLVED

[David Harrison]

On 12/04/2009, at 11:31 PM, David Harrison wrote:
>
> I was just wondering if anyone had come across a problem when using  
> proxy auto-configuration files (wpad.dat) with a Squid proxy and the  
> Air New Zealand booking service?
> e.g. If you go to airnewzealand.co.nz, and in the left hand panel  
> select a destination+date and press search.

I resolved this problem with Squid and the Air New Zealand booking  
service during the week.

The problem it turned out wasn't with the wpad.dat auto-configuration  
file but a network connection bottleneck on the Squid server that only  
became apparent when the flightbookings.airnewzealand.co.nz site was  
accessed.

The issue was resolved by tuning the underlying Centos TCP/IP settings  
on the Squid server by adding the following to the /etc/sysctl.conf  
file:
----------------------------------------
# Decrease the time default value for tcp_fin_timeout connection
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15

# Decrease the time default value for tcp_keepalive_time connection
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 1800

# Turn off the tcp_window_scaling
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

# Turn off the tcp_sack
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0

# Turn off the tcp_timestamps
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0

# Increases the size of the socket queue (effectively, q0).
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 1024

# Increase the tcp-time-wait buckets pool size
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000

# Allowed local port range
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 16384 65536
----------------------------------------

These configuration settings were from the following site;
http://www3.wiredgorilla.com/content/view/220/53


After this TCP/IP tuning the Air NZ booking site works flawlessly  
through the Squid proxy using the wpad.dat file.


David