Slashdot Mirror
Freecache
TonkaTown writes "Finally the solution for slashdotting, or just the poor man's Akamai? Freecache from the Internet Archive aims to bring easy to use distributed web caching to everyone. If you've a file that you think will be popular, but far too popular for your isp's bandwidth limits, you can just serve it as http://freecache.org/http://your.site/yourfile instead of the traditional http://your.site/yourfile and Freecache will do all the heavy lifting for you. Plus your users get the advantage of swiftly pulling the file from a nearby cache rather than it creeping off your overloaded webserver."
Well, it won't be the solution to Slashdotting, as you can't cache a whole site.
You can cache an HTML page (index.html) but all the images will pull from the local machine. You could cache each image separately, but the change would have to be made in the site's HTML.
On the other hand, I don't imagine it would be hard to write some kind of proxy script that grabs the page and changes the HTML to point to freecache SRCs for each image/movie... you could then point to a freecache of that page...
And of course, this all breaks the second somebody has a site that is heavily CGI based.
Still, it's a start. I'll be sure to use it if I ever submit any site of my own to Slashdot ;-) Many thanks to the guys at the Internet Archive for setting this up. You rock!
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
How many times have we wanted to see a website, except that it has been slashdotted and cannot see us now?
Caching is intelligent because we are interested in the content itself rather than the connection to that particular computer.
In case of Slashdotting, here's a Freecache link.
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id= 8764
/.'d... and hes apologizing for the load.
He was apparently
Here comes the test in....5.....4.....3.....
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
As I understand the setup, the ideal would be for ISPs to install this system on their networks like AOL's infernal content caching, except that it would only cache what the site owner wants cached. It seems like anyone with a static IP could join in the fun, too.
But would they? I saw this on the new service's message forum
I was perusing the content in my cache and checking the detailed status page and I noticed illegal content containing videos in one of the caches I run. What is freecache.org doing to stop people from mirroring illegal content. I currently run 2 fairly heavily used caches and it looks like only one of them had illegal content. I cleared the cache to purge the problem, but the user just abused the service again by uploading the content again. I know freecache.org cannot be responsible for uploaded content, but there has to be some sort of content management system to make sure freecache doesn't turn into just another way to hide illegal content.
Whether you believe this guy's story or not, it seems like this could subject small ISPs to the sort of problems that P2P has brought to regular users. It's not going to matter who's right -- just the idea of having to go to court over content physically residing on your server is a risk I don't see a marginal ISP being willing to take.
So we're left with the folks with static IP addresses. They're in even more trouble if John Ashcroft decides to send his boyz over to check for "enemy combatants" at your IP address.
With the current state of affairs in the US, and the personal risk involved, I'd have to pass on this cool concept.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
is freecache freecached? here comes the first test!
http://freecache.org/http://your.site/yourfile
f reecache.org
http://freecache.org/http://freecache.org/http://
seems to piss it off slightly. I wonder why...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1. Buy massive amounts of bandwidth
2. Host extremely popular web sites
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!
How are they supposed to be making money on this?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
If the referrer is slashdot, return a link to the google cache of your page element, rather than the actual element.
I trust google to be faster than these guys.
How much you wanna bet this is going to become a haven for bit-torrent seeds? Put 'em up, get 'em to people, get it started, then take 'em down.
It won't help a slashdotting because the editors still refuse to contact linked sites ahead of time. They won't know to mirror their content on Freecache.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
its pretty good. lots of the servers are swamped tho, need more of them, anyone can run a freecache 'node'. its almost like freenet, cept not anonymous.
too bad the status seems to be down, its fun to see what clips/games/demo/patches are going around.
If i put the page up does Freecache have to wait until Internet Archive caches it? or does it nab a copy of the cache right away...
if it does then I propose that all posts of smaller sites hence forth should be freecached.
anyone wanna second it? not that it will do any good.
moo.
How long until freecache is the way to publish warez on the web? Geocities storage + freecache's bandwidth = teh free shit 4 u.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
umm, but lets put something that you would actually like to see, so we can test if that service won't be /.ed also
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
What's the catch? Theres got to be a catch.
on slashdot - lots of times. It only cache's files bigger than 5MB so if someone is slashdotting your MP3 collection it's a boon. If you're jsut hosting a dynamic web page with dynamic images your mysql server is still going to feel the strain.
Personally, I believe that Slashdot should really begin caching static versions of the most popular pages itself...
Too late buddy. You shall now be modded redundant...
Maybe things have changed, but when this made the rounds of Slashdot in September 2003 "There were 20,000 hits in 24 hours, and plenty of discussion in the Slashdot forums regarding slow downloads" http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id= 8764&PHPSESSID=5d3c8e0ad9765c01ba411759c623899 8
- Does that mean that Slashdot will now link to potentially low-bandwidth sites using Freecache?
- Will you update their FAQ on the whole subject of caching since Google and Freecache seem to feel that the legalities of site caching is small enough for it to be a non-issue?
- Or are we still going to be relying on people posting links and site content in the comments because the original site has been blown away under the load?
Inquiring minds would like to know.Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Here is the google cache of the page.
Yeah I know, now just mod me down!
It turns out it's man
Slashdotters, do your worst!!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I should point out that Freecache is in beta mode. By coincidence, this posting on Slashdot here is an interesting way of working out bugs.
This sig no verb.
The demo seems to be down.
0 /movies/LuckyStr1948_2/LuckyStr1948_2.mpg
Oh crap that was the wrong link - try this:
http://freecache.org/http://movies03.archive.org/
Slashdot should have their own caching system that automatically creates a cache of whatever website is being posted.
There are a lot of problems, but for all those "home publishers" on cable or slow DSL accounts, this is great -- they can publish content out to the wide, wide and wild web that they could never hope for before.
Although I predict this gets used heavily for less savory content - manifestos and the like that people want to get out there. But we'll see.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
As their status page explains...
I have a few questions though, which I guess may be answered on the website:
1. Can users submit/upload files to be hosted on their website.
2. Who's responsible for ensuring that it doesn't turn into a pr0n/warez stash?
3. Can users request removal of cached content (something not possible with the Google cache).
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Yes, but the thing that you are not considering is that probably 75% the slashdot effect is just people looking at the link for about 5 seconds, and then closing the page and moving on the the next story. This means no browsing, meaning that it is not important if the whole page is not up there. And as far as pictures go, I would guess that alot of people click on the link, even though they are not too interested, see the text, and realize that they are _really_ not interested. So they close the page before they even need pictures.
In other words, the important stuff, like the rest of the site and the pictures, will be resources only used on those that really care, while those that don't get to see a flash of the text for a second to get a really general idea.
After all, thats what the slashdot effect is, a whole bunch of people that don't really care that much, but want a quick, 5 second look at it.
Anything I give it just times out...
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
What happens if you use archive.org's own Wayback Machine as a cache? Instead of linking that hugely popular Slashdot story to someone's relevant actual Geocities site, you link to a 12-day-old copy of that Geocities site in archive.org? Does archive.org get slashdotted easily?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I see dreaded pictures from goatse.cx in the future. This will break the nice convenient domain name clues that Slashdot gives us, so we don't accidently do things like that.
I think they're looking more for serving big files, not html and inline images. Smallest file size is 5mb.
I should clarify that I mean this will not be the solution to the effect caused by "surprise-slashdotting" where the site owners are not notified ahead of time.
If a savvy site owner is notified by slashdot editors before being listed, they might be able to take some preventive action.
I don't think that currently happens very often, though.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
It's not about the editors, it's about the authors. You, as an author, can use the freecache service by using their style links in your pages. It doesn't cost you anything to do it, and it's pretty easy to do.
It's not perfect, it will certainly not be used by everyone. Still it's something you can do defensively, especially if you're serving mpegs of your latest case mod or bear attack or whatever.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Apparently, it's pronounced "free-crash" right now...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Should I mirror a file which is DRMed, since it won't in fact be downloaded from my computer but from some ISPs mirror, could I be charged of making that file available? How could anyone prove that file hadn't been removed from my computer? Is an illegal file in transit the responsability of the site owner (it may no longer exist on the site), the downloader (where it still doesn't exist) or the middle man, where it exists temporarily?
-- Nothing unusual happened today
Research at some big sites indicates that these caches have little impact on regular site use, but are beneficial in flattening some spikes. Frankly the case for Akamai gets less compelling by the day...probably the sweet spot for this tech is one in which the last mile is very slow (dialup).
If Slashdot cached one of its many duplicate stories there and then linked to it in the story, after several people clicked the link would one:
1) get a massive feedback loop bringing down the entire internet
2) get cold fusion?
3) profit?
Did anyone else misread that as "Freeache"?
I mean, I'm all for free stuff, but an ache...?
Maybe, when the site is no longer slashdotted, people will be able to get a look at their FAQ and see that (the submitter should have done that instead of submitting stuff that he just discovered, even if it has been availlable for a long time, without even checking for it's real purpose).
I do not think this is a solution to slashdotting :-)
you mean like this?
Create a file format that is basically just the web page plus dependent files tar'd and gzip'd - then release browser plugins that automatically take any file with the correct extention, and seamlessly ungzip/untar it to the local cache before displaying it like normal - I have yet to understand why nobody has combined this basic idea with BitTorrent. Seems like you could get a lot of mileage with it.
This use of Freecache is still subject to the actual problem that enables Slashdotting: inadequate scaling planning. Some sites are limited by the cost of effective scaling failover countermeasures, but most are limited by lack of any planning for even potential Slashdotting - this use of Freecache still falls prey to that primary problem. And who can remember to prepend "http://freecache.org/" to their entire domain URL, including their repetitive "http://"?
n g". More sites will be able to plan for that single change to their webserver config, than will be able to plan to distribute the freecache.org compound URL. And it won't depend on users correctly using the compound URL. More sites will get the benefit of the freecache.org service. And when freecache.org disappears, or ceases to be free, switching to a competitor will be as easy as changing the config, rather than redistributing a new URL.
A better use of Freecache is "under the hood". Make your webserver redirect accesses to your "http://whatever.com/something" to "http://freecache.org/http://whatever.com/somethi
--
make install -not war
it should grab one copy of the non-dynamic pages and images and update itself every few hours, then delete the cache once its not very busy.
kind of like the astalavista website translator, except a cache of everything static.
I could see people using this to start their own pr0n sites.
Perhaps there should be an alternative to scientific projects and OSS projects.
freecache.fsf.org perhaps?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Me. And I was modded down for posting my initial mis-reading.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
So now instead of /.ing the website we /. the Internet Archive instead.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Actually, index.html would only be cached if it is 5MB or greater in size.
Which is unlikely. So it won't be cached. Nor will the PNG/GIFs.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Not really.. I can't access their servers now. All will tremble before the might of slashdotting!
That is another stumbling block that will prevent it from saving may websites. If I can't use the freecache link, I will be forced to go back to the orginal link...as will a good percentage of the other /. crowd.
KevG
Just zip up a tarball/archive of your site and submit that to slashdot.
Informative? Fucking retards. I hope metamod catches up with whomever did that stupid fucking mod.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Story is only a few minutes old and mecca of Internet caching has already been slashdotted. Maybe someone kid with an old P5 266mhz under his desk can mirror the site for us.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
if freecache can't even handle the slashdot effect, what does that say about its advertised service :) ?
smd4985
I modded up your reply from yesterday (specifically for the point about the goggle cache and ad banners), but to pick the nit that brought out the flames, a site's creator or admin directing visitors to freecache as remedy for the /. effect is OK. /. itself employing freecache, as you seemed to be suggesting, is generally thought of as a Bad Thing and ain't gonna happen.
What's up with the ad with the seedy looking Mexican for Paco University? I think that's what it's called, or was it Capello?
/.ed link to the beheading video?
The tagline should be "Paco University: Are you a Mexican or a Mexican't?"
BTW, anyone got a non
Is a public available squid server. If you put any link through the server such as:
www.squidserver.com/http://www.doomedsite.com
The public squid will cache a copy of it. On the first access (like when the approver looks at it) It should look at a request and see if it has a recent cache. If it does feed that, if not get the newest copy and promth the user for a refresh or automatically refresh after a set time (5 sec). It will update its cache as the site does. All without having to upload anything. After a few days when nobody is utilizing the cache, it can purge it. Waiting for the next doomed site.
DISCLAIMER: The may be how Freecache works, but I can't get to it
1) because I am at work.
2) as the comments suggest it is slashdotted.
KevG
Well I tried to go there now and it looks like the site has been slashdotted. Ahhh, the irony in that!
:P
Well that kind of disproves that archive.org can handle the load.
Can archive freecache itself?
Freecache... Sounds a little like all advantage to me ;).
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
In case Freecache gets oveloaded, here's a Freecache link to Freeca... errr... hmmmm....
Shades of Grayden
Which is why it's very important to have a simple, clean, and informative main web page with links to more details. Sites that overload their main page with crap actually drive away viewers.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
- http://freecache.org/http:freecahce.org/
C-Bfree ipod and free gmail!
I can't get to anything on freecache.org (or archive.org) from where I work. Our so-called "SmartFilter" blocks access as follows:
Access denied by SmartFilter content category. The requested URL belongs to the following category: Anonymizer.
Just pad out your pages with lots of hidden text.
:)
<!--
<?php
for ( $i = 0 ; $1 < 5000000 ; $i++ )
{
print "a";
}
?>
-->
Hey presto. All your pages are > 5MB!
Get your own free personal location tracker
How does this system guard against doctored content coming from the cache sites? Since they allow sites to sign up to become a cache server, wouldn't it be possible for a malicious user to sign up and use some locally-modified code to add a virus to all the .exe files that get sent out from their cache? They could even customize the output of their CGI depending on what domain you are in, making it easy to target specific sites and/or hide their munging from other sites.
..wayne..
Freecache is really just a half-baked ("precursor") version of P2P; not in any sense a long term solution, but interesting at least.
Correct use of P2P with network based caches (i.e., your ISP installs content caching throughout the network) and improved higher level protocols (i.e. web browsing actually runs across P2P protocols) would resolve slashdot effect type problems and usher in an age of transparent, ubiquities, long-lived, replicated content.
For example,
Basically, your request (and thousands of other slashdot readers requests) would fetch "closer" copies of content rather than having to reach directly to the end server (because, the content request [i.e. HTTP GET] actually splays itself out from your local node to find local and simultaneous sources, etc]. In theory, the end server would only deliver up one copy into the local ISP's content cache for transparent world-wide replication, and each end point would gradually drag replicated copies closer - meaning that subsequent co-located requests ride upon the back of prior ones. I'm just repeating the economics of P2P here
In additional to all of this, you'd still have places like the Internet Archive, because they would be "tremendously sized" content caches that do their best to suck up and permanently retain everything, just like it does now.
Physically locality would still be important: if I were a researcher doing mass data analysis / etc, then I'd be better of walking into the British Library and co-locating myself on high speed wi-fi or local gigabit (or whatever high speed standards we have in a couple of years time) to the archive rather than relying upon relatively slower broadband + WAN connections to my house or work place.
For example, say I'm doing some research on a type of flying bird and want to extract, process and analyse audiovisual data - this might be a lot of data to analyse.
Equally, places like the British Library will also have large clusters, so when I want in there to do this data analysis, I can make use of large scale co-located computing to help me with the task.
Nothing here is now: if you think about it, these are logical extensions of existing concepts and facilities.
This is a great idea, sadly it seems to have been slashdotted. Has anyone been able to get this to work for them?
Ah yes, fear the horrific backslashdot effect.
Trolling is a art,
Uh, yeah that and it's been slashdotted!!!! So much for that solution.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
even though the anti-business commie slahsbot liberal groupthink will essentially negate this hope. Oh, but for a single point.
I hope it freecached itself :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Or savvy slashdot editors can link to the cacheified version. Providing it works since their page has not yet come up for me. not sure if I trust that to much.
An error occurred while loading http://www.archive.org/web/freecache.php: Timeout on server Connection was to www.archive.org at port 80
Somehow I don't think this solution will work.
Ban Reality TV!
Yeah, just what we need to see... 5 MB webpages... Make a page that big and no one will see it.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Freecache simply caches any data that goes through it, no matter what it is. You don't have to precache anything; the first request, freecache goes and gets it, the second request is served from cache.
relative addressed image URLs would apply, as the local browser would pull them from a URL based on the URL the current page lives at.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Yeah, and then post the link to /.
Watch back as 100,000 visitors cause your web server to melt down and your mom and pop get a bill for 500GB traffic and have to sell the car to pay it :-))
Thats why they say don't give kids poker.. they can poke their eyes out. PHP and little knowledge are dangerous combo kiddo!!
IdiotsI wonder why this continues to be a problem. It should be obvious to any judge that a hosting provider cannot and should not check everything that is uploaded to their servers.
It may be reasonable to expect them to pull content that is illegal where they are located, but that should be a simple matter of notifying them, they pull the content, no harm done. They may even be required to disclose the identity of the uploader, after which this person can be prosecuted.
I don't think anything in this scenario is outrageous or unfeasible. What is outrageous and infeasible is holding the host responsible for what the user uploaded. Then why is this the way it happens all too often?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
... but once others can install the cgi, then you can help add bandwidth. I do see a problem with this.
If you look at the requirements... one is 5Mb connection, who (besides businesses) will have a 5 Mb connection.
Mike http://thenextgenerationofradio.com
Can I say RTFFAQ now? :)
Yes, the site is down. Yes, it's ironic that this should happen to a site hosting information about a service that's being claimed as a solution to the slashdot effect.
But I don't think that it really is an indicator. I happen to have read the site yesterday after reading the Petabox article, so I think I have some of the basic concepts down. As I understand it, the idea works with cooperation from ISPs (and others) to provide more localized caches of large popular files. The motivation for the ISPs is that by providing the cache, they save on their upstream bandwidth and the associated costs.
So, while it's funny that we've slashdotted the archive.org server where the Freecache website is, Freecache itself is not dependant upon archive.org's bandwidth.
It's also worth noting that the concept is still in beta and pretty new - I don't think they've got a lot of ISPs on board yet. From what I can tell, it seems a very good concept - the only thing I can think of that I would want to make sure of if I were an ISP is that my cache is only available to users on my network (the whole saving on bandwidth usage argument falls apart if you suddenly become a cache for users on other ISPs) but I would think that would be pretty easy to do.
For those who haven't yet been able to read about it, here's Google's cache of the front page.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
... oh wait, nevermind.
:-P
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Get set, ready, go!
--jordan
Too much code.
<!--
<?php
echo str_repeat("a", 5000000);
?>
-->
Yes, that's right. Freecache has been slashdotted.
Yes, but the thing that you are not considering is that probably 75% the slashdot effect is just people looking at the link for about 5 seconds, and then closing the page and moving on the the next story.
The other 25% is us looking at a page for 5 seconds and then replying because as everyone knows here, it's much more entertaining to reply without RTFA.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
You can see the Freecache page on Google: Click Here
I wonder how long before Google Labs starts doing this?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
thanks for that, it made me chuckle and cheered me up a bit:)
I'm waiting for the introduction of the resource file. Sort of like a jar file...you can access content in it, but it transfers as a unit.
;) )
An entire site might be stored in a resource file. Or just the files a single page depends on. You could have a meta tag that points to the resource file for a site. Or a hyperlink on the front page to the resource file for an entire site.
And guess what...if it's over 5MB, Freecache will cache it.
There will be some conflict with per-MB bandwidth charges for hosts, though. But I'm sure someone will work out a decent solution. (like Freecache.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Well, multipart/related is that kind file format or content type although it is not mean for that purpose.
For other resons, is is likely that webmasters want use that type. I think about stylesheets.
(Mozilla browser do not support multipart/related. See bug 18764 or http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18764 .)
Dear Xiadix,
You're fired. Pack your shit up and get out. Now.
Slacker...
Why doesn't someone develop a small program like SETI program, but instead of finding intelligent life, it supports the space and bandwidth for caching like FreeCache? it would be true P2P cache! Then to get past all the illegal files, put a disclaimer in the program that the person running the program is not involved with what is being hosted. hopefully if you get around 1,000 home computers, you can get around the ./ effect:-)
LainTheWired = isgod( int Lain, int denial, float truth)
This would be great if my employer didn't restrict access to archive.org as allegedly being in the "sex" category.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Yep
Well, it won't be the solution to Slashdotting, as you can't cache a whole site.
With the exception of large web farms like Google/Yahoo/CNN/etc., it seems that many cannot handle the SlashDot effect. Considering that SlashDot is responsible for the majority of the traffic that their front-page articles generate, wouldn't it make sense for them to supply reverse-proxy-cache links for any articles they post on the main page? If Slashdot would serve the bulk of the traffic, no one would complain about being slashdotted anymore. Instead of downloading content, the content-origin web servers would just process small "if-modified-since" requests generated by the hoarding masses.
You know.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Globule works like this, but for complete sites, see: Globule.org
Globule is a platform which allows a Web server to automatically replicate its documents to other Web servers, to maintain replicas consistent using adaptive replication policies, and to transparently redirect users to the best replica. It does so by negotiating resource allocation with remote servers in a peer-to-peer fashion.
The MHT format is specified in RFC 2557, an open standard.... so you can implement your own MHT writer or reader if you like.
The trick with saving a page as an MHT in IE is that if the page includes any frames that are not visible (which are made visible by script that runs when the user clicks on buttons for example), IE appears to not automatically load that content, so the saved page doesn't include it. If you have a complex page, you might need to write code (or use chili kat if it's in your budget) to get an MHT created in the manner you would like.
Isn't the solution in IPv6 where you can broadcast?
Then my server would just say WOW that's I'm gonna run out of bandwidth soon. I'm gonna collect all requests for each 5 minutes and then send them all them same page in one go.
But then again you're from the USA and not about to join IPv6 but perhaps the page will go to the USA with IPv6 then split up at your main gate and split up into multiple Ipv4 pages.
Ha, that would mean that a major news event outside the US would have no backbone consequence on IPv6 but only slow down national Internet backbones of the US who still use IPv4.
Only on /. could you find someone optimizing code that would be used to bloat web pages.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Definitely not an adequate solution, given it's current condition: slashdotted to hell.
Idiots! They should've had it cache itself first before posting this to /.
So why was the link to the site included as text? It seems ironic...
The problem with non-comusator caching systems is that there is little if any incentive for the end user to want to use them.
What ISPs should really do, is sell you a 256K internet connection (or whatever speed you happen to get), but then make all local content available at maximum line speeds... In other words, if you use the caching system (which saves the ISP money on the price of bandwidth) you get your files 6Xs as fast, or better in some cases.
I don't see why ISPs don't do that. It seems like everyone would win then. It wouldn't just need to be huge files either, they could have a Squid cache too, and not force people to use it via transparent proxy (most people would actually want to use it, despite the problems with proxy caches).
Right now, users have incentive not to use it. Mainly because it's another manual step for them, and to a less extent because caching systems usually have a few bugs to work out (stale files, incomplete files, etc).
I know that it would only require minor modifications to current DSL/Cable ISP's systems to accomplish the two zones with different bandwidth.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Too much code:
:)
<!-- <?= str_repeat("a", 5000000); ?> -->
I meant as in "The doctor is busy and cannot see you now."
:P
Houston, Texas, Soviet Russia, what's the difference?
Another site to redirect to the goatse guy...
Has anyone actually used this for an extended period of time? How does it actually scale for different sorts of volume?
For example, I would like to moderate and host various (probably realvideo) compressed lectures as a public service. Some would be academic in content, such as is seen at http://www.msri.org/publications/video/index.html or http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/ ; others might be more political, or science policy. I would not expect more that a few thousand hits/year for most of them, but some might get popular. A typical hour lecture might run 25Mb.
Is this a necessary or desirable service for this purpose? What about for a high school geometry course, say?
Only on /. could you find someone optimizing code that would be used to bloat web pages.
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Maybe he is one of the Microsoft Frontpage coders?
*cheap shot*
http://freecache.org/http://www.slashdot.org
Its not like anyone actually reads the articles right?
Creating a network of caches is easy. Akamai is really nothing more than lots of Red Hat Linux systems running squid. - The secret is in directing a user to a topologically nearby server.
... most of them patented. Do we have a clue how freecache does this?
Without this secret sauce no bandwidth is saved. There are a lot of ways to perform this magic