Squid is used by hundreds of Internet Providers world-wide to provide their users with the best possible web access. Squid optimises the data flow between client and server to improve performance and caches frequently-used content to save bandwidth. Squid can also route content requests to servers in a wide variety of ways to build cache server hierarchies which optimise network throughput.

Thousands of web-sites around the Internet use Squid to drastically increase their content delivery. Squid can reduce your server load and improve delivery speeds to clients. Squid can also be used to deliver content from around the world - copying only the content being used, rather than inefficiently copying everything. Finally, Squid's advanced content routing configuration allows you to build content clusters to route and load balance requests via a variety of web servers.

In many developing countries, or even in rural areas of industrialized countries, bandwidth may be expensive. Saving bandwidth reduces Internet infrastructural costs significantly. Since Internet connectivity is so expensive, ISPs and their customers reduce their bandwidth requirements with caches.

Although reduction of latency is not normally the major reason for introducing caching in these areas, the problems experienced in the high bandwidth regions are exacerbated by the high latency and lower speed of the lines to those regions.