Re: [nznog] Proxy Servers...

Hi List, The open source solution I was thinking of would add a "bit" of work to your current Linux/Unix admins. Getting the grips with an application is, imho, 100 times easier than learning something from scratch. The "peering" I had in mind was ISP's exchanging objects, rather than a cache at an IX. For you guys (and most ISP's I would assume) it's better to exchange objects over your APE/Direct link, compared to int. bw. This does not stop the IX's from having cache peers at the IX thou. As for the cost saving, it's a bit of a catch 22, BW costs are always heading down, the catch is transmission cost (from my understand at least). Implementing this in the days of good old Dial up would have made sense. Then again, with HTML5 and media rich content on the up take, who knows :) In a nutshell, each ISP will have to look at the cost to implement, unless someone wants to come up with a formula that will give an ISP an idea of cost per user/per megabit/per ? Thinking "out the box here" - what if it was to be implemented for certain sites only - like youtube/google maps/<insert high BW site> ? Cheers, Pieter On Mon, 10 Oct 2011, Paul Tinson wrote:

Admin overhead doesn¹t reduce a whole lot with an open source solution. Many of the overheads are around cache tuning, purging stale objects, resolving oddball issues that occur and general systems management.

<sarcasm> I have never seen an over blown solution, especially from designers who have never built anything </sarcasm> Very true there is many a toast making email system around, but just because its 'just' cacheing don¹t discount the useful ability to steer traffic any way you can.

Do you mean caches run by the IX or inter cache communication as peering? I could see someone trying to offer a caching service to multiple ISP's, the try thing being able to cater for a wide range of bandwidth and interconnect requirements.

I would imagine many an ISP would be basing what they would for pay such a service on what it can save it in any given month, and would expect to pay very little when it saves very little. Unless the proposition is based around add on services like making toast.

paul

On 10/10/11 12:13 PM, "Pieter De Wit" wrote:

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Hi List,

I think more ISP's should implement proxies (can be OPT-OUT ?)and even extend it to something like the peering agreements that are in place. Everyone knows that int. bw costs quite a bit. Proxy solutions doesn't always have to be "built for purpose hardware", there are open source solutions that will do the job, with less overhead/admin and on common hardware, imho.

I think things get tricky when solutions (any and all for that matter) are "overloaded" - Hey, Let's do L7 filtering along with deep packet inspection, cut the grass, iron the clothes etc - This is when things fall appart

Cheers,

Pieter

On Sun, 9 Oct 2011, Paul Tinson wrote:

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Saving money on international bandwidth with HTTP proxy caches is somewhat dubious and I suspect (no hard facts just experience) that in the long run it wont save you anything.

That all depends on your implementation of course.

There are a number of reasons you may want to run transparent proxy caches, saving money is only one of them. There are providers that offer a 'secure browsing' solution, others tend to believe the story that it increases performance for customers as its local (this is possibly true if you build it right), or that you can do interesting things at layer7 as the packets pass through, some have used them for transcoding in mobile networks...

However many transparent proxy cache installs suffer from high operational overhead, poor cache performance, high scale out costs and high impact on failure (many fail closed) and many have obscure failures that mean interruption to the customer while you work out why the magic black smoke escaped...and how to put it back in.

I would be more than interested in peoples views on the hardware that is commonly used in these solutions. I know I have my own views on some of them, less than happy would be mild in some cases.

Simon the xtra/telecom cache is purely international, so any of your content that is delivered over domestic routes will not go anywhere near it.

Paul Random Thoughts Daily

On 9/10/11 8:39 AM, "Philip D'Ath" wrote:

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I'd be surprised if anyone is using a transparent cache for local content.

Transparent caching only makes sense if it is going to save you money. Also you would need much bigger caching boxes to handle both national and international traffic, as opposed to just international.

-----Original message----- From: Simon Lyall Sent: 08-10-2011, 23:24 To: nznog Subject: Re: [nznog] Proxy Servers...

On Sat, 8 Oct 2011, Ragnor wrote:

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It does sounds like Vodafone are running a caching transparent http/web proxy now. These are all the rage again now with Telecom, Telstraclear, Slingshot and others running them.

I believe there are still a number of ISP's not running one: Snap, Xnet, Orcon, Maxnet ICONZ, Actrix and probably more.

Do these ISP level cache's actually work? I have long lived images with headers to indicate their age and long expire time and I get a fresh copy every time I request it from my XTRA DSL account.

We certainly notice browser caches and the Corporate proxies (lots of IE6 users, proxy doesn't support http gzip compression, often bluecoat) especially when they break (usually by caching a corrupt element or no updating properly) but I don't get the impression ISP proxies are caching even my "highly cacheable" stuff.

Is it because we are delivering bytes out of NZ? I can switch to delivering out of the US if it'll hit the "Free ISP CDN" :)

-- Simon Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.

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