Serious Use of PROXY module in commercial applications

[Ge...@iacnet.com]

I'm interested in commiserating with people who are considering using
the apache proxy module in commercial applications like ISP's which were
mentioned in the message from Randy@Covalent.NET previously.

The issue/concern is that the apache proxy server doesn't seem to be 
dominant in that "application space."

In particular I'm evaluating three proxy servers right now, Apache, Netscape 
and Microsoft
for the purpose of implementing a Reverse Proxy Server which will be a "virtual 
remote web site"
for Information Access Company web products, especially so that they appear to 
be
faster and more local to the user for international (non-US) customers.

To get a solution working with Apache our developer only had to comment out two 
lines
of code from mod_proxy, rebuild the server and do a little configuration work.

The thing will go to Quality Assurance and get some benchmarking soon.

Meanwhile I'll be evaluating "commercially supported product components"
for feasability. Cost is not an issue. It just has to work.

Normally reverse proxy servers allow outsiders to get to sites behind a 
firewall.

But in this case we are going to use Reverse Proxy to allow outsiders to get 
ProxyPass
action that goes through a back-end private-leased-bandwidth channel to our
main web site via routes which are not advertised to the public.

Some content is locally cached. Currently ProxyPass does that, but I want to 
figure out
how to control it better so that it doesn't bother asking the IF-MODIFIED-SINCE 
question
more often than a few times a day on certain areas of content like /images.

This is a serious application where millions of dollars in revenue are at stake.
Public announcements have already been made having to do with a current
routing-based solution, such as:

TITLE: DIGITAL ISLAND AND IAC SIGN INFO DISTRIBUTION PACT 
PUBLICATION: Online Product News, Feb 1, 1998 v17 i2

TITLE: IAC adopts Digital Island's Overnet for international database 
distribution. 
(Information Access Co.)(Brief Article) 
PUBLICATION: Information Today, Feb 1998 v15 n2 p12(1)

It is possible that public announcements will be made about
any improvements to this. 

Re: Serious Use of PROXY module in commercial applications

[Dean Gaudet <dg...@arctic.org>]

I'm curious why you're not evaluating Squid <http://squid.nlanr.net/>.  To
be honest, that's what I recommend to folks setting up sites using inverse
proxying... unless they have specific requirements that Apache satisfies. 
Like when you're building a hybrid origin/proxy server Apache is obviously
the choice.  But when it's just a true proxy cache, squid is much better
in my opinion -- it's far more lightweight and scales to a larger number
of clients.  And if you're forced to use Solaris it will kick apache's
butt because it's a single process (multithreaded in their beta code). 

I'll forward your message to someone I know who is using Apache's proxy in
a setting like this. 

Dean

On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 George_Carrette@iacnet.com wrote:

> I'm interested in commiserating with people who are considering using
> the apache proxy module in commercial applications like ISP's which were
> mentioned in the message from Randy@Covalent.NET previously.
> 
> The issue/concern is that the apache proxy server doesn't seem to be 
> dominant in that "application space."
> 
> In particular I'm evaluating three proxy servers right now, Apache, Netscape 
> and Microsoft
> for the purpose of implementing a Reverse Proxy Server which will be a "virtual 
> remote web site"
> for Information Access Company web products, especially so that they appear to 
> be
> faster and more local to the user for international (non-US) customers.
> 
> To get a solution working with Apache our developer only had to comment out two 
> lines
> of code from mod_proxy, rebuild the server and do a little configuration work.
> 
> The thing will go to Quality Assurance and get some benchmarking soon.
> 
> Meanwhile I'll be evaluating "commercially supported product components"
> for feasability. Cost is not an issue. It just has to work.
> 
> Normally reverse proxy servers allow outsiders to get to sites behind a 
> firewall.
> 
> But in this case we are going to use Reverse Proxy to allow outsiders to get 
> ProxyPass
> action that goes through a back-end private-leased-bandwidth channel to our
> main web site via routes which are not advertised to the public.
> 
> Some content is locally cached. Currently ProxyPass does that, but I want to 
> figure out
> how to control it better so that it doesn't bother asking the IF-MODIFIED-SINCE 
> question
> more often than a few times a day on certain areas of content like /images.
> 
> This is a serious application where millions of dollars in revenue are at stake.
> Public announcements have already been made having to do with a current
> routing-based solution, such as:
> 
> TITLE: DIGITAL ISLAND AND IAC SIGN INFO DISTRIBUTION PACT 
> PUBLICATION: Online Product News, Feb 1, 1998 v17 i2
> 
> TITLE: IAC adopts Digital Island's Overnet for international database 
> distribution. 
> (Information Access Co.)(Brief Article) 
> PUBLICATION: Information Today, Feb 1998 v15 n2 p12(1)
> 
> It is possible that public announcements will be made about
> any improvements to this. 
> 
>