Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 03:27:50 +0100
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9411111209.A14757-0100000@miriworld.its.unimelb.edu.au>
From: "Daniel O'Callaghan" <danny@miriworld.its.unimelb.EDU.AU>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-proxy@www0.cern.ch>
Subject: Re: Chaining proxies, was Re: Handbook On Running A WWW Service
On Fri, 11 Nov 1994, Larry Masinter wrote:
> The best place for the high capacity caches for documents is in the
> middle of the service provider's high-bandwidth backbone, and not at
> any particular site's node.
>
> This would save more bandwidth than having them at the periphery of
> the network. The only question would be what might incent network
> service providers to attach such a service?
Australia is embarking on Volume-charged internet access, and the
commercial service providers are already being charged by volume.
Australia-On-Line does not provide a caching proxy server, thus forcing
customers to reload documents from the net, and forcing them to pay more.
I am manager of HiLink Communications, which *does* provide this service,
because the customer pays 20c/MB for cache access instead of $2.00 per MB
for direct or non-cache accesses. We keep the 20c to pay for the disk and
CPU (and additional accounting labour), but the customer certainly
benefits. We don't expect to make much money on the cache, but we do hope
that our customers look upon it favourably.
I'm wondering if AARNet would think of allowing a commercial operator to
operate a national set of caches on the AARNet backbone. I have not
asked them yet (in case you are listening, Andy, Geoff and co).
The cache provider could charge people to use the cache at a lower rate
than International access charges would otherwise be.
Incentive enough?
Danny