web proxy logs from school servers?

[tridge at samba.org]

Is anyone gathering up the web proxy logs from any of the school
servers? (I presume they do run a proxy cache)

The reason I ask is that if the logs show the kids are hitting dynamic
web sites frequently, and that multiple kids are hitting the same
site, then it might be worth installing rproxy on the school
servers. That would allow effective cacheing of dynamic
pages. Normally a proxy cache can't cache a page like slashdot.org
(not that the kids would be reading slashdot!) as it changes each
time. By using rproxy, only the changes would come across the slow
link, thus saving valuable bandwidth.

Whether its worthwhile all depends on the ratios of dynamic and
non-dymamic content, and whether kids tend to flock to the same
sites or reload a dynamic site often enough that its worth the extra
hundred or so bytes per request that rproxy adds. So we'd need logs to
work out if its worth the effort.

rproxy hasn't had much TLC lately, but that's easy enough to fix.

Cheers, Tridge