Chile Forum

Has anyone tried running their own caching proxy server?

I just set up a squid proxy server for our office network, and I am getting about a 30% speed boost with the mostly default settings. Video and audio sites load a lot faster. The funny one is all those stupid Chilean web sites finally load in less than a day. All that flash animation garbage they fill their sites with does not need to be requested over and over again.

tvn.cl gets the all time flash trash award for Chile. I timed it without the proxy and it loads in around 20 to 30 seconds (on a good day). With the squid proxy it loads in under 10 seconds. The stuff outside the country is even better, as even if the local ISP's do not cripple the connection just normal latency of accessing something around the World will slow the time.

I think most people miss that about 90% of your web browsing bandwidth is dedicated to loading images and advertising, not the content you want. If that stuff is already sitting on a computer one hop away, rather than 30 or more hops away, you can free up a lot of bandwidth.

admin wrote:I think most people miss that about 90% of your web browsing bandwidth is dedicated to loading images and advertising, not the content you want. If that stuff is already sitting on a computer one hop away, rather than 30 or more hops away, you can free up a lot of bandwidth.

A plugin exists for Firefox called Adblock Plus[1]. It's primarily for blocking ads from common banner ad companies. But, for all images (and Flash areas) it displays a faint, little "block" tab to allow the user to block more things from frequently visited pages. Not as powerful as what you guys are talking about. But, easier to use for most people.

FWIW: I also like CS Lite[2] for blocking cookies from well-known advertising/tracking companies. It has predefined, managed lists of domains to block.

[1] http://adblockplus.org/en/
[2] http://forum.softwareblaze.com/viewtopic.php?t=137

Mark

Here is my short list of things I have done to improve speed and reliability of our internet connection. Much of it is likely overkill for home users, but some of it might be useful. Feel free to add to the list.

1. DON'T USE WINDOWS

2. DON'T USE INTERNET EXPLORER ON WINDOWS (firefox,or anything is better).

3. Two internet connections. One through VTR, and one through Telefonica. I am considering replacing telefonica with telefonica del sur. I have overall been happier with their service, at least with the phone I have.

4. I bonded both internet connections in a failover and load balancing configuration using linux, on two separate nick cards connected to two separate routers. One or the other connection is reset almost every day by the ISP, so that I have to manually force the reconnection. I still have not found a good keep alive solution to work around this. Telefonica is being the worse offender lately. Luckily, both seem to have different peak times when things slow to a crawl or resets are common.

5. use opendns.org for DNS lookups, rather than the default dns server given by the ISPs in Chile. They can be days out of date, and really slow. I have had them in the past go down or become unresponsive, essentially killing your internet connection even though the internet was still up and working. It is like having a phone with no phone book. If you have a different DNS server when that happens though, you basically have their network with no one else using the bandwidth. A real pleasure to see how your internet connection should and could work.

6. caching proxy server. Squid also includes the ability to catch DNS lookups, which helps cut down on the initial connection along with catching the content. There are other solutions for home users that will catch the DNS lookups locally. I am still tweaking and testing this. It works good because we have sufficient people in the office that are constantly visiting the same set of sites, so browsing has progressively gotten faster. Request from a 10/100 network connection on the other side of the room are much nicer than from other side of the World.

admin wrote:I bonded both internet connections in a failover and load balancing configuration using linux, on two separate nick cards connected to two separate routers.

For home users (and who don't want to dedicate a computer, hard drives, etc. to act as a router) there are affordable routers with two WAN ports like the Netgear FVS336G, $270 US [1]. I almost bought one when it came out two years ago. But, reading their forum it had some bugs. I haven't looked into it since then. But, I notice the firmware bios has been updated four times. Things should have improved.

I've considered dedicating a computer to always-on services. If I did that, I'd consider one of these Disk On Module[2] or flash-to-IDE adapters[3] to reduce energy consumption. It doesn't require much disk space to run Linux without a desktop interface.

[1] http://netgear.com/Products/VPNandSSL/W ... S336G.aspx
[2] http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/f ... sh_modules
[3] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822998002

Mark

Another thing that can be useful is to run the TCPIP "tweak" tool at http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks.

It makes some suggestions about low-level TCPIP settings. They offer a tool to make the suggested changes on XP. (They're a reputable web site. I trust the tool.). They advise against adjusting Windows Vista (AKA "Millennium Edition II"). Linux users have to know how to make changes themselves.

Edit: You can also break things with these changes. I'd write down the original working values before changing them.

Mark

admin wrote:One or the other connection is reset almost every day by the ISP, so that I have to manually force the reconnection. I still have not found a good keep alive solution to work around this.

Do you mean you have to power something off? Occasionally I have that problem with my router. I can get into the router's web-based configuration screen. But, it's stuck in "trying to connect" (to the DSL modem). I have to power off/on the router, and then it connects automatically. Personally, I think it's a problem with the modem. I think it needs to see the router go away before it will reset its connection with it.

If I had an always-on environment, I'd 1) script something periodically (every minute?) to monitor that condition in the web-configuration tool. It's really simple to interact with a web page using a script. And 2) use one of those X10 (home automation) devices to control the AC power to the router. I think those are wireless. If I wanted to keep it simple, there are instructions to create an AC outlet using a relay connected to a low-voltage parallel port, with example C code to tun all the parallel port pins on and off (as a command-line script).[1]

But, if you just issue a Linux command to reset the eth{n} device, that ought to be simple.

[1] http://www.epanorama.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=143
http://www.atariarchives.org/ccc/chapter12.php

muntaman wrote:It doesn't appear to have any configuration options for firewall, NAT, or other options you would expect.

I'd be surprised if it doesn't have a firewall if it has a wifi access point built in. That sounds like a combo modem, router with wifi AP. Who manufactures the modem? Model number?

Mark

is it one of those new VTR wireless Motorola modems?

I just had a look at one for the first time at a relatives house in Santiago. PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE rip off the customer garbage. They where charging my relative by the computer in the house. 2 notebooks and 2 desktops per month all set to the mac address with wep encryption.

Pick up wire shark on the web, and a few other automated standard wireless cracking tools and enjoy free internet in any town VTR operates in Chile. Unfortunately only the people who are paying for the modem will be the ones having trouble accessing them.

I spent about 5 mins messing around and cracked their silly attempt at security, without even having physical access to the modem at first (it was in a different room). The most confusing part was trying to decide which of the dozen or so wireless VTR modems in the neighborhood really belonged to the house I was in and trying to use their internet (I cracked three before being told the name of the one for the house). Purely designed to rip off the users and nothing else.

By the way, at least in the house I was in VTR setup the password as "0123456789". I suspect that is a fairly common thing for them to do company wide to simplify the process when people call up complaining they can not access their computer. Please confirm that if you should come across it. Anyone that has one setup that way, PLEASE CHANGE IT. Really, PLEASE REFUSE any router from VTR with the wireless turned on. Buy your own off the shelf system, and plug it in to the either net cable with proper security enabled.