Re: Cisco Cache Director (Was RE: Does Squid beat the rest? )

I'll answer Nigel's Interceptor-related questions offline since they aren't
germane to this mailing list. I do want to amplify one of his points:

> What I want is the ability for the router people (Cisco for us) to be able
> to shunt particular requests into some other system, and the people with
> the great caching ideas to be able to take those redirected requests.

That's what we'd like, too. It's just not feasible for us as a non-router
company to build autonomous switching and whatnot into something that's
supposed to be an application accelerator. So to follow up your analysis:

> However everyone always wants to own all the territory.... and this may
> not be good for us at the sharp end.

We at least do not want to own all of the territory. But Cisco's Cache
Director looks like a free add-on to IOS and they expect to make their money
by selling their Cache Nodes. From their web pages I can see no mention of
any kind of details as to how a third party (whether an open platform running
Squid or an integrated system like ours) can join a Cisco caching system.

Which makes their cache control protocol a little like their router redundancy
protocol. I always thought that the Internet market was full of technology
providers who wanted to win by doing an open thing better, but in 1997 it
seems to be about doing a closed thing and forcing others out of the market.
I guess somebody thinks that this is the best way for Cisco to increase its
value to its shareholders, and who am I to argue?
Received on Wed Sep 24 1997 - 10:33:42 MDT