Re: A More Aggressive Approach to Caching

heiri@switch.ch writes:

>> One other approach to sites like www.microsoft.com would be to use caching
>> software which can be set to ignore the wishes of the content publisher,
>> caching material based on rules written by the cache administrator despite
>> the wishes of the authors. Ignoring cookies and caching everything for
>> administrator-set periods based on URL's regardless of headers is quite
>> technically feasible. And do we really mind annoying Microsoft?
>
>I agree with you!
>
>As long as connections to other countries and continents are so expensive
>we (cache managers) should try everything to "convince" unfriendly
>sites to co-operate with caching proxies in the interest of the users.
>
>What do you think about the idea to maintain a web page with all known
>sites which are using unfair methods to prevent caching.

Last night I came up with another way of dealing with "cache unfriendly"
sites.

The cache could keep track of what sort of hit rates it gets for each
server hostname. In situations where bandwidth is scarce, the low-hit-rate
sites could be given lower priority or "quality of service."

So as a cache administrator, you're not in violation of the HTTP protocol.
The users behind your cache still get the objects from the unfriendly sites,
but perhaps with considerable delay. In situations where bandwidth is
relatively plentiful the priority/QOS effects shouldn't be noticable.

Duane W.
Received on Tue Dec 17 1996 - 10:43:56 MST