On Thu, Oct 19, 2000, Christian Kuhtz wrote:
Hey gang,
Has anyone else around here noticed a decrease in caching efficiency over say, the past year or so? Seems we've seen a radical drop (order of magnitude). Seems popular sites are using more and more entirely dynamic, rapidly changing content..
If there's indeed a reduction in efficiency, caches simply introduce more transactional latency and provide no benefit to offset cost. What do people consider reasons to be to keep caching in the network? Have caching infrastructures materialized as starting points for content distribution, or have you guys ultimately rebuilt your infrastructure to serve that specific purpose?
I don't know anything about the CDN guys (as I don't work for a CDN company directly or indirectly, regardless of what $BIG_NUMBER of people say/think) but the decrease in caching "efficiency" has to do with a very very poor understanding of what is actually possible with caching, both forward and reverse. I'm sure a lot of us cache people could go into great detail about how even highly-dynamic sites like yahoo, slashdot and hotmail could become cache-friendly, but it seems that: * people are lazy / uneducated * people *WANT* the traffic
Faced with high hw cost, licensing fees, and reduced efficiencies, it appears business cases to keep the caches in the network (with all the effort and uglyness it takes to maintain exclude lists) seems difficult to make.
Which cache products are you using? Some of the current and upcoming work with squid will probably change this, if I get my way. ;-)
PS: if you feel there's a place better suited to discussing this, shoot me a pointer. thx.
Hrm. Perhaps the wrec ietf group might be a better place to ask this type of question? In general, I think that theyre are way too many web-developers out there who are ignorant of just how simple yet powerful the caching primitives in HTTP/1.1 are, and too many companies who are just interested in more damned traffic. :-) 2c, Adrian -- Adrian Chadd "It was then that I knew that I wouldn't <adrian@creative.net.au> die, as a doctor wouldn't fart in front of a dying boy." -- Angela's Ashes