Re: [SOLVED] Updated web page, but seeing older one?

["Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz simpaticus com>]

At 23:24 1/1/2004, you wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-02 at 00:14, Vidiot wrote:
> > I do not disagree with ISPs trying to save money, but when a cahe proxy
> > works as badly as the one they are using, it has to hurt their customers.
>
> Not for the ISP, and not for their customers, in most cases.  This is
> not a normal case.

True, and I agree: this is not a normal case. Rarely does a static page 
somewhere on the Internet change less than 10 minutes after a fresh request 
was loaded by your cache, and then a customer insists that you do a refresh 
anyway. In 99.9% of all cases, I would not expect it to be a problem.

It bothers me because it is essentially pinching pennies, sacrificing 
quality of service for a small marginal savings. Since allowing the proxy 
server to /check for a newer page/ only incurs a significant bandwidth 
penalty if the page has indeed changed, then only that 0.1% of cases will 
act differently and those page loads represent an insignificant savings. 
That's a cheap mentality, and I don't like it.

> it was an inconvenience for Rodolfo, but that setting saves the ISP a
> [probably] healthy sum in connectivity costs (in-between carriers).

Nowadays there are plenty more dynamic pages which are difficult to cache, 
but from a while back I can tell you that the ISP I used to help run saved 
a solid 55% of the outside (satellite) bandwidth it would have required by 
having a good cache implemented. That meant $30,000 a month in savings on 
bandwidth alone, never mind the joyous customers who got a response back in 
10ms and 4 Mbps over our cable network, instead of 675ms and 256 Kbps over 
a satellite link.

Still, setting their cache to be so aggressive today is going to generate 
measly savings over what a properly-configured cache would have.


--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz simpaticus com
http://www.simpaticus.com