Apache Traffic Server is an ASF Open Source project implementing a fast, scalable and feature rich HTTP proxy and caching server. We will examine the technical details behind TS, what it is good for, and how you can configure it to accelerate your web traffic, and make complex problems easier to solve. Traffic Server was originally a commercial product from Inktomi corporation, and has been actively used inside Yahoo! for many years, as well as by many other large web sites. As of 2009, Traffic Server is an Open Source project under the Apache umbrella, and is rapidly being developed and improved on by an active community. The community is vibrant, with well over 150 active users, contributors and committers.

This talk will explain the details behind the Traffic Server technology; What makes it fast? Why is it scalable? And how is it different compared to other HTTP proxy servers? We will discuss several use cases, and show how to configure and operate TS for common tasks. Being an HTTP proxy server and cache, there are many use cases, in the areas of forward, reverse and transparent proxying.

Traffic Server is designed using a hybrid processing model, combining an event driven engine (state machine), with a multi-threaded process approach. This allows Traffic Server to scale on modern multi-core systems, taking advantage of available CPUs. From our perspective, we've combined the best features traditionally used, solving many difficult problems and at the same time we avoid running into some of the pitfalls associated with existing solutions. This approach gives us

* Scalability on SMP
* Predictable and low latency characteristics
* Lightweight on system resources (few threads, little memory wasted)
* Efficient and reliable disk I/O

After introducing the technical details behind TS, we will discuss the common applications of a proxy and cache, when and why they would be applicable, and how to configure and use Apache Traffic Server effectively. Focusing on how to use Traffic Server in a production environment, we'll walk the audience through

* Installation process
* Configuration files
* Operations and monitoring

The goal is to give a solid foundation of web proxying and caching, and why Apache Traffic Server is a contender in this space. No previous experience with Apache Traffic Server is necessary, but familiarity in the general areas of HTTP and HTTP servers is beneficial to follow the presentation.