Web Caching

Other Configuration Options

Most browsers have two other settings that you may want to consider changing: the browser cache and the refresh settings. In some cases, a shared proxy cache may make the browser cache redundant, especially if the browser has good network connectivity to the proxy.

With Netscape Navigator, I recommend setting the disk cache size to 0 and using a memory cache only. 1–3MB of memory cache should be sufficient. In addition to freeing disk space for other uses, this configuration has another advantage. The memory cache is not persistent between browser sessions. If you think you are getting stale responses from the browser cache, you can just quit and restart. When Netscape Navigator starts again, the browser cache is empty and the suspicious request is sent to the proxy cache. In Version 4 of Netscape Navigator, the browser cache settings are found under Edit → Preferences → Advanced → Cache.

Internet Explorer (Versions 4 and 5) allow you to control the amount of disk space—but not memory—used for caching. The setting is found under Tools → Internet Options → Temporary Internet Files → Settings…. Apparently, you can’t disable disk caching. Explorer enforces a minimum cache size.^[22] However, there is an option to remove all temporary files each time Explorer exits.

Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer also have settings that control validation of objects in the browser cache. The three options are to validate the cached object every request, once ...