Outline:
The history of caching in Armenia,a small ex-USSR country, starts in September 95 when there was only one Internet Service Provider, ARMINCO, with the single 19.2 kbps satellite link to Russia. ARMINCO faced seriuos bandwidth problem when it started to provide to its customers not only E-mail, but Web access too. At that time collapse of the Soviet Union brought to undetermined situation with telecommunications in Armenia, that it was impossible to get a new satellite channel with more bandwidth. Circumstances were so bad that we had to serve pver 200 users through a single 19.2 kbps dedicated channel to Moscow. Obviously we came to conclusion of some way of badwidth saving using web "replication". First solution was to set up a web mirroring with most popular content providers and to make an FTP download of complete web-directories overnight when the link was not so overloaded.
We managed to mirror some resources, although it was not easy. The #1 obstacle was copyright violation problem. One day we failed to arrange an agreement with Ruissia Online - a new information service running by our providers in Moscow - SOVAM Teleport Joint Venture. SOVAM refused to allow information mirroring from the Russia Online Web server motivating by copyright problems with respective content providers. As an alternative solution we were suggested to use Harvest Proxy Cache which was successfully installed and put into operation in October 1995. Shortly, the first in Armenia proxy server was registered in NLANR hierarchy.
Currently we exploit 10 proxy servers and this number may grow up rapidly. Nowadays there are 3 independent ISPs in Armenia with total bandwith over 300 kbps. Only ARMINCO's user community gre up from 200 users in 1995 to over 1000 in April 1997. Two main proxy servers in ARMINCO serve two large network segments. Both Servers are based on Intel's Pentium Pro platform with 128Mb RAM and 4Gb cache diskspace, running FreeBSD UNIX 2.2.1. As a caching software we use SQUID and Netscape Proxy (mainly for SSL proxying).
[PICTURE - MAP]
MAP LEGEND:
in hierarchy:
- ARMINCO MAIN 1 proxy.aic.net
- ARMINCO MAIN 2 proxy-2.aic.net
- THE PARLIAMENT OF ARMENIA parliament.am
- CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF ARMENIA concourt.am
- YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY ysu.am
- SHIRAK REGIONAL NETWORK shirak.am
- ECHMIADZIN REGIONAL NETWORK siuny.am
out of hierarchy:
- INFOCOM proxy.amilink.net
- American University of Armenia(AUA) proxy.aua.am
- UN TRADEPOINT Armenia proxy.tpa.amilink.net
INFOCOM, AUA and TradePiont are currently using CERN HTTPD as proxy software.
During about two years of experience with caching software and participating in NLANR cache hiearchy. Results are very good and cache system showed it suitablity in our case of limited and very expensive bandwidth of international satellite links. Proxy servers are currently serving over 20000 requests per day transferrring over 100Mb web data daily with 30% average hit ratio.
Since ARMINCO is a commercial Internet Service Provider security issues are on the first place. Using proxy technology on firewall servers allowed us to provide easy access to the web for our user communities. Several corporate intranets were successfully built on proxy technology, which allowed us not only isolate inner networks from outside invasion, but to save IP space. We made our best to make proxy and caching very popular and useful. But there are some problems presented below.
Having the proxy run means that you solved some problems, but the new ones comes out as well. Generally problems may be broken down into 2 categories: technical and organizational. Here's the quick summary of the main problems:
Future plans are to connect more regions of Armenia and involve everyone in hierarchy. Certaily this require deep understanding of benefits of joint cache system from all ISPs and corporate networks and organizations. Plan to convince more users. Something like a joint access policy needs to be worked out with other ISP's.
ARMINCO also plans to promote cache hierarchies not only in Armenia, but in some other Newly Independent States like Russia, Ukraine, Belorus, Moldova, Kazakhzstan