[rescue] SS2 memory?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, March 7, 2002 at 17:11:23 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] SS2 memory?
>
> I'm in the middle of turning my SS2 into a caching proxy.

A caching HTTP proxy?  That's one thing I don't think an SS2 would be
worthwhile for, unless of course it's your only choice _AND_ you have a
very slow Internet connection.  Squid in particular has high VM and CPU
demands, and HTTP caching is a high I/O job by definition.  I suspect
(though I've never tried it) that an SS2 would only increase your
browsing latency and unless you have reason to believe that a
significant amount of the web content you view will be viewed multiple
times before it expires then there's not going to be any gain.

If you have a high-speed connection and only a few users then a local
caching HTTP proxy won't do you much good even if it's running on a much
more capable machine.

I found a local squid running on a Pentium-133 to be useful when my
connection was a 28.8kbps PPP link, but now with ADSL and/or cable modem
it became a very noticable hinderance.  I do find using the cable
provider's cache to be beneficial though, except maybe when it is
overloaded at peak times.

The squid servers I run for various ISPs really do make a dent in the
backbone bandwidth required (10-30% reduction) once they've got a few
hundred or more clients.  However you've really got to have serious
high-end hardware to run a cache for several thousand users or more! ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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