Re: Help w/ Transparent Caching

From: John Saunders <john@dont-contact.us>
Date: 13 Feb 1997 07:39:50 GMT

Support (support@ans.com.au) wrote:
> As an ISP and a cost tied up with the data volume, connecting everyone to a
> Squid can save us a lot potentially. However, some people just insist on
> not using the proxy while others simply do not know how to set up the
> proxy. A way to redirect all their HTTP and FTP requests automatically to
> the Squid shall be beautiful.

We found that blocking port 80 through the router was effective in getting
users to configure the proxy :-) Although we sent many emails and fielded
support questions before implementing the block. Only a few resistive
types complained "I don't like cached data", "Well what about the 5Meg
cache that Netscape keeps for you?" ... "Arr, well yes, arr."

Linux provides the transparent proxying, but it only provides about 30%
of the needed solution. It has a means of redirecting a packet, that was
intended to be forwarded, to a port on the local machine. The additional
70% is made up of a server that binds to the port and forwards HTTP
requests to the Squid cache. I have about 80% of such a server written
and it sort of does something, although when I finish it off I will
know for sure how feasable this is.

> In the same direction, does anyone know of any program that can cache NNTP
> traffic. So instead of doing a full news feed everyday, we can feed only
> what the users want and still present the full news group from out upstream
> service provider.

nntpcache does this. ftp://archie.au/unix/news/nntpcache should get you
there. It was written by Julian Assange from Suburbia.

Cheers.
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        . | John Saunders - mailto:john@nlc.net.au (EMail) |
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Received on Thu Feb 13 1997 - 00:05:01 MST

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