Freecache 258
TonkaTown writes "Finally the solution for slashdotting, or just the poor man's Akamai? Freecache from the Internet Archive aims to bring easy to use distributed web caching to everyone. If you've a file that you think will be popular, but far too popular for your isp's bandwidth limits, you can just serve it as http://freecache.org/http://your.site/yourfile instead of the traditional http://your.site/yourfile and Freecache will do all the heavy lifting for you. Plus your users get the advantage of swiftly pulling the file from a nearby cache rather than it creeping off your overloaded webserver."
Cache owner's liability (Score:4, Interesting)
But would they? I saw this on the new service's message forum [archive.org]
I was perusing the content in my cache and checking the detailed status page and I noticed illegal content containing videos in one of the caches I run. What is freecache.org doing to stop people from mirroring illegal content. I currently run 2 fairly heavily used caches and it looks like only one of them had illegal content. I cleared the cache to purge the problem, but the user just abused the service again by uploading the content again. I know freecache.org cannot be responsible for uploaded content, but there has to be some sort of content management system to make sure freecache doesn't turn into just another way to hide illegal content.
Whether you believe this guy's story [slashdot.org] or not, it seems like this could subject small ISPs to the sort of problems that P2P has brought to regular users. It's not going to matter who's right -- just the idea of having to go to court over content physically residing on your server is a risk I don't see a marginal ISP being willing to take.
So we're left with the folks with static IP addresses. They're in even more trouble if John Ashcroft decides to send his boyz over to check for "enemy combatants" at your IP address.
With the current state of affairs in the US, and the personal risk involved, I'd have to pass on this cool concept.
Taking bets.... (Score:2, Interesting)
i've used freecache before (Score:3, Interesting)
too bad the status seems to be down, its fun to see what clips/games/demo/patches are going around.
Questions to the Slashdot owners (Score:4, Interesting)
- Does that mean that Slashdot will now link to potentially low-bandwidth sites using Freecache?
- Will you update their FAQ on the whole subject of caching since Google and Freecache seem to feel that the legalities of site caching is small enough for it to be a non-issue?
- Or are we still going to be relying on people posting links and site content in the comments because the original site has been blown away under the load?
Inquiring minds would like to know.This is seriously a solution (Score:1, Interesting)
Although I predict this gets used heavily for less savory content - manifestos and the like that people want to get out there. But we'll see.
Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a few questions though, which I guess may be answered on the website:
1. Can users submit/upload files to be hosted on their website.
2. Who's responsible for ensuring that it doesn't turn into a pr0n/warez stash?
3. Can users request removal of cached content (something not possible with the Google cache).
Re:Not solution to slashdot effect, but still grea (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, the important stuff, like the rest of the site and the pictures, will be resources only used on those that really care, while those that don't get to see a flash of the text for a second to get a really general idea.
After all, thats what the slashdot effect is, a whole bunch of people that don't really care that much, but want a quick, 5 second look at it.
This will cause problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Questions to the Slashdot owners (Score:2, Interesting)
The working solution would be for the slashdot editors to give a site owner a heads-up so that they can prepare for the flood.
Alternative solution (Score:4, Interesting)
put it under the hood (Score:5, Interesting)
A better use of Freecache is "under the hood". Make your webserver redirect accesses to your "http://whatever.com/something" to "http://freecache.org/http://whatever.com/somethi
Re:The business model is astounding... (Score:1, Interesting)
No. In fact, it makes many useful things.
"Before the McInternet, there was a real, useful resource that had great information on it"
No, before it was commercialized, there was hardly anything on it.
"Fire, The Wheel, Electricity"
You said that profit destroys everything. Well, we still have fire, the wheel, and electricity, now, don't we? And thanks to the profit motive, we have iPods, "The Simpsons", and allergy medicines.
half baked version of p2p (Score:3, Interesting)
Freecache is really just a half-baked ("precursor") version of P2P; not in any sense a long term solution, but interesting at least.
Correct use of P2P with network based caches (i.e., your ISP installs content caching throughout the network) and improved higher level protocols (i.e. web browsing actually runs across P2P protocols) would resolve slashdot effect type problems and usher in an age of transparent, ubiquities, long-lived, replicated content.
For example,
Basically, your request (and thousands of other slashdot readers requests) would fetch "closer" copies of content rather than having to reach directly to the end server (because, the content request [i.e. HTTP GET] actually splays itself out from your local node to find local and simultaneous sources, etc]. In theory, the end server would only deliver up one copy into the local ISP's content cache for transparent world-wide replication, and each end point would gradually drag replicated copies closer - meaning that subsequent co-located requests ride upon the back of prior ones. I'm just repeating the economics of P2P here
In additional to all of this, you'd still have places like the Internet Archive, because they would be "tremendously sized" content caches that do their best to suck up and permanently retain everything, just like it does now.
Physically locality would still be important: if I were a researcher doing mass data analysis / etc, then I'd be better of walking into the British Library and co-locating myself on high speed wi-fi or local gigabit (or whatever high speed standards we have in a couple of years time) to the archive rather than relying upon relatively slower broadband + WAN connections to my house or work place.
For example, say I'm doing some research on a type of flying bird and want to extract, process and analyse audiovisual data - this might be a lot of data to analyse.
Equally, places like the British Library will also have large clusters, so when I want in there to do this data analysis, I can make use of large scale co-located computing to help me with the task.
Nothing here is now: if you think about it, these are logical extensions of existing concepts and facilities.
Re:The business model is astounding... (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Cache extremly popular media files for your customers
3. Advertise that customers can access Freecached files from the local network instead of the Internet.
4. Get more customers and pay less bandwidth costs.
5. PROFIT!!!!
Re:The business model is astounding... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a way of making money, it's a way of spending them. It's run by the Internet Archive, founded and funded by Brewster Kahle [wikipedia.org]. It's there for your free enjoyment - revel in the goodness of humanity!
Censored (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be great if my employer didn't restrict access to archive.org as allegedly being in the "sex" category.
ISPs are the problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
What ISPs should really do, is sell you a 256K internet connection (or whatever speed you happen to get), but then make all local content available at maximum line speeds... In other words, if you use the caching system (which saves the ISP money on the price of bandwidth) you get your files 6Xs as fast, or better in some cases.
I don't see why ISPs don't do that. It seems like everyone would win then. It wouldn't just need to be huge files either, they could have a Squid cache too, and not force people to use it via transparent proxy (most people would actually want to use it, despite the problems with proxy caches).
Right now, users have incentive not to use it. Mainly because it's another manual step for them, and to a less extent because caching systems usually have a few bugs to work out (stale files, incomplete files, etc).
I know that it would only require minor modifications to current DSL/Cable ISP's systems to accomplish the two zones with different bandwidth.
Re:Waiting for the resource file. (Score:3, Interesting)