cache peer proxy-only - is there a middle ground?

[Chris Woodfield <rekoil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I'm facing an issue where we'd like to implement cache peering on our  
squid farms, primarily to leverage the combined disk capacity across  
all our boxes into a larger cache. I would presume that this requires  
the use of the proxy-only directive to avoid content duplication.  
However, this has raised the issue of server overload - there's a very  
real possibility that a single hot object, if it only lives on a  
single server, could overload that server with requests from all the  
other peers in the event of a flash crowd. I'd like to find some  
middle ground.

I'm wondering if there's a way to configure squid such that content  
retrieved from peers is cached locally, but for a much shorter period  
of time than content the cache retrieves directly. Is this possible  
within squid, or should this be a feature request?

-C