On Tue, 22 Jun 1999 01:29:11 -0700, Josh Cohen (Exchange) wrote:
>in the HTTP draft, the term "transparent", I beleive,
>is meaning "semantically transparent".
>In cache parlance, "transparent" seems to mean
>"network transparent".. we should probably come up
>with a good word for the wrec version of transparent
Do we really mean (in our own language) that transparent means
*network* transparent, or do we mean content consumer transparent?
Consider a WPAD enabled environment: the content consumer or
high-level parts of the client are unaware of the existence of the
proxy (so long as the proxy is semantically transparent) and yet no
clever trickery is going on.
I agree that we use the terminology differently to HTTP[0], but in
understanding our own definition of a "transparent proxy" we must
understand what we mean by "transparent" in the first place.
So, does anyone disagree that a proxy that is used by the
configuration through WPAD is "transparent"?
The current draft talks of "transparent proxy_ing_" - which might help
differentiate between the HTTP definition. However, that difference
is at the expense of playing word games in English, and I'm not keen
to do that (which is why I want to try and get this sorted).
It seems that, as a community, we are saying that our definition of a
transparent proxy is one that is fed (by whatever method) by some form
of traffic interception. If we take a more generalized approach, that
means a transparent proxy is simply one whose presence is unknown to
the content consumer. Yes? No?
[0] In cache-speak a transparent proxy is going to have to do some
special stuff to be semantically transparent. So perhaps it is
appropriate to annotate the HTTP definition with a bit more
clarification[1].
[1] I _think_ I've managed to work out the fundamental difference. In
the HTTP spec. "transparent proxy" is a verb-noun phrase. In our own
language "transparent proxy" is a noun. If I'm right on that then
does this help our understanding any further?
Ian (again requesting comments on the draft in general)
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