Tweak Dial up with Proxy Caching – QUESTIONS!? + answers!

Okay so I’m going crazy trying to come up with an ideal tweaked setup for my mom’s new laptop.  I must get it perfect before I send it out to the middle of nowhere 24kbps dialup country.

Using a localhost DNS server probably does improve performance, but i’m not sure about a proxy.

These are my questions in response to THIS Tweak guide:

I’ve been attempting to do proxy caching technique using Squid, but I really am wondering exactly how it functions and I have some doubts as to whether or not it really works.

So from my understanding this is how it all works:

1. User clicks link on a webpage:
2. Client contacts DNS server (ideally localhost, if DNS entry isn’t there it pulls it slowly from the net ISP or OpenDNS server)
3. Client browser requests webpage from browser cache, if not found, it asks for it from localhost proxy cache, if it’s not there it pulls it slowly from the net.
4. Files are slowly downloaded and written to proxy cache, then written to browser cache creating an unfortunate redundant data and drive usage? 😦
5. Webpage is rendered in browser.

Next time user goes to that page, ideally the content is cached locally and it will load quickly from the harddrive.

Now my major question is –
I can see how a localhost proxy cache would be useful if you had multiple people logging into the same machine where their browsers have seperate caches – but is there any benefit to proxy cache in a single user setting?

Well, I’ve concluded that proxy cache is the way to go, despite it’s added difficulty for two reasons:
1. Mozilla Firefox has the TERRIBLE habit of ERASING the entire disk cache every time it crashes or closes improperly…This renders making a huge disk cache in firefox pointless since it will likely be lost.
2. The proxy cache provides much more in terms of configuration options and works for multiple users and multiple applications.

Does the browser cache and the proxy cache function in the same way? Do they save everything?  .JS, .SWF, .PNG, etc… ?  Wouldn’t it be best to then disable the browser cache to avoid redundant disk usage?

Yes, it seems to cache everything, even cookies.  As far as I can tell the browser disk cache can be disabled when using proxy cache.

What happens if a dial up user clicks Stop – does the proxy server continue to load the files for that page – actually causing their internet speed to slow down??

Well, I’ve only dealt with Polipo caching proxy and apparently it when the user clicks Stop, Polipo stops loading the file but caches the partially downloaded file so that it continue downloading it later in case the user requests it.  However, I think I read that many other proxies do not cache incomplete files…

Haha sorry for the rant but if anyone knows the answer to any of these questions.. please please post 🙂  Thanks!

Tilt Shift Photography

I just came across some cool examples of tilt shift photography, which is something I never really knew about before. This is an intriguing effect in which full size scenes are given a miniature appearance.  It would be really cool if this sort of effect could be integrated into an animation, video game, etc.. Note to self: research tilt shift photography!

(mostly this post is just to move the “Smarty Pance – Epistemology boxer” image down so I don’t have to look at it any more)

Giving wordpress a go go!

Well due to extreme time limitations, between classes, work and moving to a new house, it seems apparent that I’m not going to have time to fix my web server any time soon.  Eventually I will, but until then, this wordpress site will have to do the trick.  I hope it is possible to export a wordpress.com site in the future so I can host it locally, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes.  For now, this will give me a sound CMS for one section of my final website project..

Yes!