Network+ E-mail: Gridlock on the Internet

Charles Arthur fails to mention a technology being used today to reduce the load of Web traffic on the Internet. Web caches reduce external traffic for an organisation by keeping a local copy of popular pages - in an organisation where every Netscape browser starts up with the Netscape home page, the bandwidth savings can be considerable.

Most ISP and academic institutions run web caches, so if you want to do your bit to reduce Internet congestion, use it!n

Ciaran Wills

C.J.Wills@ed.ac.uk