[Server-devel] Squid caching on the XSCE AND AP's

[Samuel Greenfeld]

I think you need to explain your proposed use case better.

If the APs are all attached to the schoolserver via Ethernet there really
is no reason for them to do any caching.  Having additional caches for this
would only complicate things and increase the number of potential points of
failure.

If these APs are effectively being small XS-relays (DHCP, Internet, etc.)
for remote sites directly connected to the Internet and the main XS only
provides leases/Moodle/etc. from a centralized site, caching on the APs
could help.

If you were running APs in a mesh mode I could see this potentially helping
or hurting.  If every AP along the way cached data those closest to the XS
could be thrashing their caches a lot.



On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Anish Mangal <anish at activitycentral.com>wrote:

>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 7:08 PM, Samuel Greenfeld <greenfeld at laptop.org>wrote:
>
>> Unless there are clients that are going though the router but are not
>> going through the schoolserver, I think this risks more harm than good.
>>
>>
> The reason this can be useful is not for internet browsing, but for the
> tons of GB of content (videos, maps, wikipedia) stored locally on the XS.
>
>
>> Going back to the microprocessor analogy, the Level 2 cache usually is
>> much larger than the Level 1 cache, and only slightly slower.  Most
>> community routers using USB sticks will be much slower than a schoolserver,
>> and will not have the RAM to cache anywhere close to the same number of
>> files in memory as the schoolserver, or the storage space of a hard drive.
>>
>>
>>
> The analogy doesn't run very well, as the AP is serving 20 users while the
> XS could be serving 200 or more.
>
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 9:31 PM, Anish Mangal <anish at activitycentral.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I think it was Tony (please correct me if I'm wrong) who pointed out
>>> that network capacity in a School Server setup can be a hindrance (esp
>>> considering 200 kids, and 20 kids per AP).
>>>
>>> This weekend, I attempted to run squid on a TP-Link router. I used a USB
>>> drive as a storage medium, and flashed the router with the OpenWRT SECN
>>> firmware. The initial results seem quite promising, and I'm going to
>>> explore this a bit further.
>>>
>>> If anyone's interested in hacking on this or has thoughts/feedback,
>>> please chip in :-)
>>>
>>> Drawing a "microprocessor" analogy, having a L1 cache on the XSCE and an
>>> L2 cache on the AP, and some smart fine tuning, we could potentially make
>>> much more efficient use of the network capacity we have.
>>>
>>> This can be REALLY advantageous if someone is planning to use the SECN
>>> firmware in the mesh mode (no ethernet cables whatsoever). The AP's
>>> wouldn't have to talk to each other as often, if they all have small cache
>>> memories embedded in them.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Anish
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Server-devel mailing list
>>> Server-devel at lists.laptop.org
>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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