Tim wrote:
Proxying can only speed things up, for you, if you access something
that someone else has already accessed before you. *And* if that
data is cacheable.
I replied:
In general, true.
It doesn’t sound as though this service is conventional proxying,
though. It sounds like they’re dynamically rewriting web pages to
reduce the number of TCP/IP round trips. Since a round trip via a
satellite takes about half a second, there’s a lot of scope for
speeding things up.
Tim wrote:
Even pre-fetching is still dependent on the data being cacheable.
It’s not really pre-fetching, either: it’s just a translation layer. As
you note, though:
Some
sites just don't work well with any sort of proxying, and some are
deliberately hostile to it.
it’s not something the sites expect.
I should note, though, that Opera Mini does something rather similar
(this time, to reduce bandwidth requirements and CPU requirements on
mobile phones), so it’s not that unusual.
James.
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