Re: decreased caching efficiency?

["Majdi S. Abbas" <msa () samurai sfo dead-dog com>]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 06:36:03PM +0100, Andrew Bangs wrote:
> 5. There's NOTHING in it for the website owner, other than the
> possibility that SOME pages might display faster for SOME users.

        It's worse than that.  Many large providers, including at
least a couple of tier 1's that I know of, are transparently 
proxying port 80 traffic for purposes of caching.  If you don't
make your pages cache friendly, you are potentially sacrificing
a large amount of 'traffic' as people behind such caches will
experience problems with the page.

        Making your pages inoperable with caches will not 
eliminate the caching; it'll simply send your traffic to your
competitors.

> 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. Otherwise, there's little
> reason for them to care.

        Think again.  When potential customers dollars walk to the 
competition, you will start caring.  I'm not going to pay you so that
my customers can visit your site and buy things from you -- that's
completely out of the question.

        --msa