From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 15:15:57 -0400
the problem is that one person's idea of improved service may be
another person's idea of degraded service. getting stale data
to me faster may not be much help. I would argue that it
is up to the producer and consumer, not the ISP, to decide what
level of service is appropriate.
Speaking of which, in Adelaide, at the IETF terminal room, there were
http "transparent" proxies running. It turns out that if you bypassed
them, you got faster service than if you used the transparent proxy
servers provided expressly for the IETF terminal room.
I'm told it saved 15% of the overall bandwidth consumed by the IETF, and
given the limited bandwidth in and out of Australia, I'm somewhat
sympathetic to why it was installed. However, it's still much more
polite ask people to use a proxy server than to just try to sneak in a
"transparent" proxy.
If they had asked nicely, I might have decided to use it. As it was, I
was annoyed enough to simply bypass the proxy server, and gain for
myself faster web access.
- Ted