Comment Latency vs. bandwidth (Score 1) 151
There are two factors that affect the performance of web (HTTP) lookups: latency and bandwidth.
Latency depends on the distance between client and server. You won't be able to send data faster than the speed of light. Bringing the data closer to the client helps to reduce latency, especially for small lookups.
Bandwidth becomes the limiting factor when you transfer (large amounts of) data over under-dimensioned pipes.
In general, I'd be a much more happy person if people would use HTTP caching headers (Expires and such) more often, as then a Squid proxy can bring substantial performance gains.