To: www-talk @ info.cern.ch
Subject: Re caching of frequently used pages
It can happen that at any one site many people are more or less
simultaneously (within days of each other) browsing around the "popular"
pages of the web. This is particularly true for undergraduate courses
that introduce them to the web, and to "open day" demonstrations of the
web.
If we are thinking about more support for caching, a LAN-cache server
would be a better idea than caching in a personal client: you configure
the client to say you have a LAN-cache server and thereafter it always
accesses the net through that server, allow it to deliver cached
material and/or to cache material fetched for you.
Of course, any greater use of caching must raise the issue of an
"expected frequency of update" value to be held with each document, in
order to assist the LAN-cache server in knowing how long to keep things.
John L
PS This idea arose in discussions with Peter Mills of Manchester.