Other options are then used to select which peer to pass a request to. The second field indicates the type of relationship, and must be set to either parent or sibling or multicast . Data retrieved from this remote cache will not be stored locally, but retrieved again on any subsequent request. While this is good for latency, it can be a waste of bandwidth, especially if the other cache is on the same piece of ethernet. If you want to prefer one cache over another, you can add a weight value to the preferred cache's config line.
Larger values are preferred.
Your weight value should thus not be an unreasonable value. This tag is covered in the multicast section, later in this chapter. Squid will send ICP requests to all configured caches. The response time is measured, and used to decide which parent to send the HTTP request to. Squid will then use this port to check if the machine is available.