Re: Webbrowser cache implementation.

> [Please accept my apologies if this is too offtopic for your list, I
> initally was going to reply personaly but I thought others might feel the
> same here]

Personally I think it's entirely on topic, especially if you feed back
any pre-fetching code to the squid project :-)

> That is a good idea.. In fact thats how I have my computer at home
> setup.. But, what are that chances that most home users would set that up?

Very high *if* you write it so it involves no setup *and* it is installed
at the same time as the browser by the same installation package. In fact
it could even be part of the browser, offering an http port on 127.0.0.1,
so if you wanted to use it with another browser, you'd just start Mnemonic
and minimise it. If my understanding of Mnemonic's structure is correct, it
could be a Mnemonic module (are you making them dynamically loadable?) which
was invoked only when the first request arrived on the appropriate port,
thus keeping the code size down for people not using it; likewise if
using it only as a proxy for another browser, all the other mnemonic
modules except the cache would be unloaded thuis making it equivalent
to a simple cache only.

> users to use the squid proxy.. If we want to get a decent amount using it
> we have to use transparent proxying (not an ideal solution)...

I've heard about this but haven't seen it in practice yet. What are the
drawbacks? - as i understand it it sounds ideal. Only reason I haven't
tried this here yet (actually I want to use the technique on port 25 to
filter all mail for outgoing spams rather than on the web cache) is
that we have a Cisco as a router (not surprisingly) rather than
a linux, and I believe it's just Linux that can do this at the moment
with some mods to its IP Firewall code.

> A web browser NEEDS to have some caching: Otherwise a <back> would take
> as long as the orignal load... The only place where I would use a
> webbrowser cacheless is on a lan with a cache on the lan.. But why would

Yes, but if the browser and the cache are on the same machine with the
same disk (which is what I was proposing) the loading speed should be
damn near identical, barring the tiny small IPC overhead. You can listen
on the loopback interface like Alta Vista personal search engine does.

> cache functionality in Mnemonic to be flexible enough that a cache could
> tell the browser: "Look, we're on a lan, there is no point in you doing
> much caching at all.. Give it up" And with the object oriented modular

Which with the squid protocols would work because you know the cost to
the nearest neighbour, I think?

> module from memory.. Also makeing the browser more cache concious it could
> have seperate reload, redisplay, refresh functions.. Reload would force a

good point; this is a shortcoming of current browsers, but I don't think
the fix to this is tied to whether or not the browser implements the
cache. Or at least to the degree to which the cache implemented in
the browser suite is tightly coupled to the browsers internals, which
is the point I'm trying to make. By all means have them in the same
program, but make the logical interface just the same as the external one
to a real cache, communicating over IP on the lopback interface (optionally
openable to the real IP) and have the browser be totally dumb about
remembering pages, i.e. make it so it *doesn't* remember pages and
let the cache do *all* the remembering. It can be the same actual
code you have now, just moved to another module. See - your cache
is almost written! :-)

> Furthermore it would be possible to create a Mnemonic module that would
> listen on a socket and allow other browsers to use Mnemonic's cache..
> While in this mode the rest could be unloaded.. The only overhead would be
> the object broker and network manager... Although decidated caches will
> always be more effiecnt: On the desktop such ability might be desirable..

Yeah, i think that;s what I said, except I *strongly* advice you use
the same protocols as squid and make it functionally compatible, even if
the guts are a whole rewrite.

> Yes it is.. I've got a C++/perl hack at home that checks diald to see

Can you mail me privately and tell me what diald is, or at least where to
look for it. It sounds interesting.

> how much free bandwidth there is avaible, wraps squids sockets, parses
> the outcoming html to grab links.. If there is only web traffic on the ppp
> it generates http requests to squid for the html links.. It's not
> perfect.. But boy does it accelerate browsing..

Great work!

Hmmm. I wonmder if we need an extension to ICP to tell a squid cache
to go fetch a page, but don't bother delivering it to me. That way a
client can get something prefetched ready for when it has the bandwidth
to fetch it or the user asks for it?

> When you are on a 14.4k or 28.8k link in south africa everything is slow!

That's OK, when I started playing this network game back in scotland
in the 70's, we had a single 56K link to the USA for the whole country,
and echo times to the machine at MIT I was using were on the order of
a minute for single character remote echo, which we tried to avoid using!

G

PS Also think about a squid cache detection mechanism so that your
program automatically finds the nearest registered squid cache to
your site, if it hasn't been programmed in by the distributor or
typed in by the user or extracted from an autoconfig URL. Also
consider a broadcast request to find one, if that would work down
a PPP link?
Received on Wed May 28 1997 - 21:33:08 MDT