Re: decreased caching efficiency?

[William Allen Simpson <wsimpson () greendragon com>]

Daniel Senie wrote:
> It might be worth thinking about the problem from the other end. From a
> web site owner's perspective, caching is a major annoyance. Here are the
> arguments you may encounter from a web site owner or web developer:
>
> 1. It interferes with content in many cases (web site visitors may see
> cached pages instead of current content). I know cache products claim
> this doesn't happen, but it has, and often.
In reality, there are very few things that are dynamic.  I don't 
honor zero time expiry.  Even MRTG doesn't need a granularity of 
less than 30 seconds.


> 2. The website owner loses information on how many visitors are coming
> to the site.
Why should the ISP care about a faulty model?  Does the website 
owner pay the ISPs to collect such information? 


> 3. The website owner loses the demographics on where visitors are coming
> from, and especially the number of unique visitors. (It's not helpful to
> know that one cache engine visited, if that cache engine equated to
> 10,000 visits in an hour).
People go to websites to learn information.  They don't go to websites 
to involuntarily give information.  It's a de facto privacy violation.


> 4. Banner advertising may or may not display properly when caching is
> involved, thereby costing the website money.
Not all business plans are viable.  Click-throughs may work properly, 
but impressions do not make any sense.


> 5. There's NOTHING in it for the website owner, other than the
> possibility that SOME pages might display faster for SOME users.
Don't website owners have to pay for bandwidth?


> If folks running networks really think website designers and owners
> should care about caching, then there needs to be some sort of benefit
> (perhaps paid in dollars) to those affected. 

If website owners don't properly interact with caching, then there 
needs to be some sort of benefit (definitely paid in dollars) to those 
affected. 

WSimpson () UMich edu
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