Redirecting IP traffic to a web cache

For ages, KY CIOs have been dealing with a state regulation relation to web filtering and caching and I’ve been on both sides of the fence at different times as it relates to caching. Today, I certainly see some value in caching in K-12, particularly as labs full of students access the same sites during school. The challenge has always been in how to implement it properly.

This post will be brief, as I’m short on time and don’t really have all of the details at this time. CIOs might want to ask their network vendors about web cache redirection. It can be done, it seems, and it makes sense. With proper traffic redirection at the switch level, it would stand to reason that I might not even have to worry about proxy settings at a browser level on my network. That would be a huge win for school districts.

Nortel might be able to use IPFIX to redirect traffic. Enterasys could perhaps use transparent web cache.

Whatever the case, this might be worth asking your network vendor about. After reading what’s out there, I feel well behind the times for not knowing about this sort of thing already. This is a prime example of an area where districts work themselves to death at the browser/workstation level when they have so much more potential to control things at the port level.