What is a proxy server
A proxy server is an interface between your browser and the destination server.
The proxy server will take your page request and handles for your
browser the connection to the destination. These proxy servers are also able
to cache pages. If such a proxy is configured to cache it will at first take
look to its local cache if the requested page already exist. If not it can
search in other caching proxy servers or makes directly the request to
the destination. This depends on the configuration for the proxy.
The advantage of using a common caching proxy server is given by the
probability to find a page in the local cache. The probability is in general
expressed by the hit rate. A cache with several Gb size and a lot of users
can reach a hit rate of 30 to 40 percent. Frequently requested pages for
instance the help pages of your browser might be almost every time in the
cache. In case that the page is not in the local cache you shouldn't see any
difference in the elapsed time of a direct request or a request handled by a
proxy server.
Last Update: March 19th, 1997
Harald Falkenberg