Dear Alex, > and when the > hits increased on my squid box it stops responding!! > can you please let me know whats wrong? One of the reason we came across similar problem is that the limitation of file descriptors of the system. At the same time it might give problems due insufficient allocation of memory for the Squid process. Please try by allocating some additional memory by using "cache_mem" TAG. At the same time you may try to allocate more file descriptors before start Squid server. This can be done using "max_open_disk_fds" TAG. In addition to that you can allocate more file descriptors at the shell level by using following command. "ulimit -HSn 2048" But for more clearity make sure to check the log files. Sometimes you might get better hint for the problem there. Regards, Sumith