http://www.hensa.ac.uk/proxy.config

[Rzepa, Henry]

We all know how difficult it can be to get abroad using a
Web client. One solution to this has been to nominate a
"proxy". If a document is requested, the proxy is checked first
to see if it has a copy of the request.

This has been around some time, but many people tried it,
and then switched it off. The reason is that  ALL your document
requests were being funnelled into a single machine, and often
the poor thing could not cope.  If the proxy failed to respond,
your browsing came to a rapid end. Better slow access to the
States, than no access at all!

With Netscape 2.0, a new system of "round robins" was introduced.
Firstly, you requested a proxy config file (from e.g.
http://www.hensa.ac.uk/proxy.config).
This gave Netscape information on a whole host of proxies to try. When
you request a document you a) spread the proxy load around more than
one machine  and b) if a proxy does not respond, it trys another, and eventually
the original source of the document.

What if the http://www.hensa.ac.uk/proxy.config machine itself does not
respond? Well, it will have saved a copy of this from an assumed previously
successful session, and use that.  The new system "degrades" much more
gracefully.

I would strongly recommend that you go to  Options/Network/Proxies
in Netscape 2, select automatic, and enter http://www.hensa.ac.uk/proxy.config

It is not a complete solution (all so called cgi-bin requests will still have
to go to the orignal site) but it does seem to be a big improvement!

Dr Henry Rzepa,  Dept. Chemistry,  Imperial College,  LONDON SW7 2AY;
rzepa at ic.ac.uk; Tel  (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804.
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/  


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