4.5 Other Configuration Options

only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile

4.5 Other Configuration Options

Most browsers have two other settings that you may want to consider changing: the browser cache and the refresh settings. In some cases, a shared proxy cache may make the browser cache redundant, especially if the browser has good network connectivity to the proxy.

With Netscape Navigator, I recommend setting the disk cache size to 0 and using a memory cache only. 13MB of memory cache should be sufficient. In addition to freeing disk space for other uses, this configuration has another advantage. The memory cache is not persistent between browser sessions. If you think you are getting stale responses from the browser cache, you can just quit and restart. When Netscape Navigator starts again, the browser cache is empty and the suspicious request is sent to the proxy cache. In Version 4 of Netscape Navigator, the browser cache settings are found under Edit figs/u2192.gif Preferences figs/u2192.gif Advanced figs/u2192.gif Cache .

Internet Explorer (Versions 4 and 5) allow you to control the amount of disk spacebut not memoryused for caching. The setting is found under Tools figs/u2192.gif Internet Options figs/u2192.gif Temporary Internet Files figs/u2192.gif Settings . Apparently, you can't disable disk caching. Explorer enforces a minimum cache size. [4] However, there is an option to remove all temporary files each time Explorer exits.

[4] See Microsoft Knowledgebase article Q145766, http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q145/7/66.asp.

Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer also have settings that control validation of objects in the browser cache. The three options are to validate the cached object every request, once per session, or never. Validating every request ensures pages are up-to-date but may incur additional delays. Choosing never to validate makes cached pages load very quickly, but at the risk of loading stale pages. However, in my experience, these settings often do not work as I expect them to. Even when validation is set to never, some requests are still validated. Sometimes, when it's set to always, cached objects are not validated . Most likely, the browser's validation algorithm is more complicated than these settings imply. I recommend using the always setting if you have a good Internet connection and the never setting if your connection is slow or highly congested .

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Web Caching
Web Caching
ISBN: 156592536X
EAN: N/A
Year: 2001
Pages: 160

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