stevenh@inet.unisource.nl (steven hessing) writes:

There seem to be three solutions for transparent web-caching: 1 a web-cache between two routers, all traffic is routed through it. 2 a l4 switch between two routers, all traffic is routed through it. The l4 switch redirects web-requests to a www-cache. 3 a web-cache connected to a router which uses policy routing to direct web-requests to it.

There's a fourth. I used to manufacture something called the Web Gateway Interceptor which was topologically a router. It wasn't competitive as a router, either in price, performance, or number/kind of interfaces. But you could put it in parallel with another router and integrate it into your OSPF mesh and use OSPF link costs to make it be the primary path only while it was up. HSRP would have worked the same way, and I'll admit that it's a lot simpler to do (though I'm not sure it's an open standard yet?) -- Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>