Optimizing mirror use through squid

[Christian Ullrich <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

I'm looking for a way to use squid to optimize use of mirror servers. 
What I'd like is to tell squid, "these servers have the same content, so 
if you have, for instance, "http://mirror1.org/path/to/file"; cached, if 
someone asks for "http://mirror2.org/path/to/file";, you can just return 
the cached object.

Is something like that possible? I could use a redirector to send all 
requests for any number of host names to a single server, but that would 
defeat the purpose of having mirrors, i.e. spreading the load.

My intention is to work around what I'd call "client-based load 
balancing", that is, applications that discover a list of mirrors for 
the content they want and then select one of them. When several of these 
run on the same network, the more mirrors there are, the more often the 
data will be downloaded.

For example, consider the various SourceForge download mirrors or 
FreeBSD's portsnap servers.

--
Christian Ullrich