Caching Architectural Considerations

Brian W. Spolarich writes:
[Problem: how to point the users to the nearest proxy server]

Maybe there's another alternative.

Tell the users to simply use "proxy" as proxy and let DNS do the work.

To be more specific. Say you have three networks, a.edu, b.edu and
c.edu. I am assuming that networks and DNS domains are closely
related. a.edu and b.edu shall use proxy1.xyz and c.edu shall use
proxy2.xyz.

Furthermore, define CNAME aliases
        proxy.a.edu -> proxy1.xyz
        proxy.b.edu -> proxy1.xyz
        proxy.c.edu -> proxy2.xyz

Then users at a.edu point their resolver to some nameserver at a.edu,
dito for b.edu and c.edu. Furthermore, the resolvers and the name
servers at a.edu, b.edu and c.edu are configured so they append a.edu,
b.edu and c.edu, resp., to unqualified domain names.

So if some user at a.edu resolved the name "proxy", it asks the local
nameserver at a.edu for it. The nameserver sees that that name is
unqualified and adds ".a.edu.", resulting in "proxy.a.edu.". This is
of couse resolved to proxy1.xyz.

Similarly, b.edu get to proxy1.xyz and c.edu gets to proxy2.xyz, as
desired.

Just some weird thoughts,

Robert

-- 
Robert Kiessling                               Easynet DV GmbH
network administrator                          Naegelsbachstr. 25
robert@easynet.de                              D-91052 Erlangen
                                               Tel. +49 9131 89670