3 ms·

There's throttling to consider, but there's also caching. It's been a long time since I've had conversations with any NetOps folks working for ISPs, but it used

There's throttling to consider, but there's also caching. It's been a long time since I've had conversations with any NetOps folks working for ISPs, but it used to be very important for the health of a network to do considerable caching wherever possible. It's why http includes cache control headers. With TLS, only the browser can now honor this TTL, and an ISP can no longer cache a particularly popular webpage. I've long suspected that caching strategies are no longer very useful given how the internet looks today, but I also understand powerlaws and it wouldn't surprise me if caching is just as useful today as it was 20 years ago.

charleslmunger 9y ago
It would shock me if it was useful at all on today's internet - the caching I imagine is useful are the boxes that large video providers install on ISP networks. But so much of the internet is already encrypted (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, etc) that any ISP operating a transparent cache probably has a very low hit rate.
phicoh 9y ago
One of the problems with http is that nobody bothered to implement some kind of integrity check for http content (and make sure that it got wide deployment). There are too many examples of parties messing with http content. So if people cared about transparent caching, they should have added integrity checks ages ago. Now it's too late. It is interesting to compare with DNS. DNSSEC is basically just an integrity check. These days the lack of privacy is considered a serious issue. And DNS is likely to move to TLS as well.
pjc50 9y ago
So many popular webpages these days are dynamically generated that it can't possibly make much of a difference. I suspect the bulk of traffic by weight is video these days. If my ISP can cache my traffic they can censor it - and do. Every now and again I'm reminded by accident that EE mobile are scanning all my URLs for censorship purposes.
- subway 9y ago
  If my ISP can cache my traffic they can censor it - and do. Only if they can forge a cache-hit, or block a cache-miss from passing through. Something content addressable (like IPFS) would allow an untrusted party to provide useful cache. (doesn't solve the privacy aspect of the untrusted party knowing I accessed the content though).
nly 9y ago
The case for transparent proxies put in place by consumer side ISPs has largely been nullified by the introduction of elected CDN services like Cloudflare. The privacy implications aren't really any different, but at least it's the webadmin of the website you're choosing to access that gets to decide. They get to ensure that they elect a company that respects their content and provides value to their visitors.

charleslmunger 9y ago

It would shock me if it was useful at all on today's internet - the caching I imagine is useful are the boxes that large video providers install on ISP networks. But so much of the internet is already encrypted (YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, etc) that any ISP operating a transparent cache probably has a very low hit rate.

phicoh 9y ago

One of the problems with http is that nobody bothered to implement some kind of integrity check for http content (and make sure that it got wide deployment). There are too many examples of parties messing with http content. So if people cared about transparent caching, they should have added integrity checks ages ago. Now it's too late. It is interesting to compare with DNS. DNSSEC is basically just an integrity check. These days the lack of privacy is considered a serious issue. And DNS is likely to move to TLS as well.

pjc50 9y ago

So many popular webpages these days are dynamically generated that it can't possibly make much of a difference. I suspect the bulk of traffic by weight is video these days. If my ISP can cache my traffic they can censor it - and do. Every now and again I'm reminded by accident that EE mobile are scanning all my URLs for censorship purposes.

subway 9y ago
If my ISP can cache my traffic they can censor it - and do. Only if they can forge a cache-hit, or block a cache-miss from passing through. Something content addressable (like IPFS) would allow an untrusted party to provide useful cache. (doesn't solve the privacy aspect of the untrusted party knowing I accessed the content though).

nly 9y ago

The case for transparent proxies put in place by consumer side ISPs has largely been nullified by the introduction of elected CDN services like Cloudflare. The privacy implications aren't really any different, but at least it's the webadmin of the website you're choosing to access that gets to decide. They get to ensure that they elect a company that respects their content and provides value to their visitors.