Re: Known problems draft

From: Henrik Nordstrom (hno@hem.passagen.se)
Date: Sun Jun 27 1999 - 09:00:02 MDT


Comments:

Name
   Transparency breaks authentication
Comment
   This is not restricted to transparent proxies. It applies
   to all situaions where the client address is changed (NAT).

Name
    HTTP metadata must precede content body
Comment
    HTTP/1.1 already includes support for this in its
    "chunked transfer encoding". It is a transfer encoding
    which does not depend on a known content length, and
    allows for additional headers to be computed after the
    entity is transmitted. (RFC 2616, sections 3.6.1 and
    14.40)

Name
    Most entries related to ICP
Comment
    I think the general consensus on ICP for the last 1 1/2
    year (at least) is that has a very limited application.
    It does not scale or handle network or server congestion
    very well. It is suitable for use on a LAN between closely
    related caches, but not in a WAN environment.

Name
    Cannot specify multiple URIs for replicated resources
Comment
    See URN and related RFCs (specifically RFC2483). No need
    to reinvent things, only to get them accepted. The use of
    URN resolution is partially supported by Squid.

Another known problem:

Name
    Cache meshes can break HTTP serialization of content
Classification
    architecture, protocol
Description
    A cache mesh where a request may travel different paths
    depending on the sate of the mesh and associated caches
    can break HTTP content serialization, possibly causing
    the end user to receive older content than seen on an
    earlier request where the request traveled another path
    in the mesh.
Significance
    medium
Implications
    Can cause end user confusion. May in some situations
    (sibling cache hit, object has changed state from
    cachable to uncachable) be close to impossible to get
    the caches properly updated with the new content.
Indications
    Older content is unexpectely returned from a cache mesh
    after some time.
Solutions(s)
    Work with cache wendors and researchers to find a
    suitable protocol for maintaining cache relations and
    object state in a cache mesh.
Workaround
    When designing a cache hierarchy/mesh, make sure that
    for each end-user,URL combination there is only one
    single path in the mesh during normal operation.
Contact
    hno@hem.passagen.se (Henrik Nordstrom)

--
Henrik Nordstrom
Spare time Squid hacker



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