In addition to increasing the efficiency of your network, access to locally cached information can be granted more quickly than when pulling the same information across the Internet. This document describes how to configure an Alteon Networks ACEswitch or ACEdirector for transparent caching with NetCache 3.3. For details about ACEswitch or ACEdirector configuration for transparent caching or other applications, see the your ACElerate Switch Software User's Guide for Release 4. For details about NetCache 3.3 configuration, see the NetCache 3.3 Administration Guide included with the product. Web-Cache Redirection Environment Consider a network where client HTTP requests regularly overload the link to the Internet.
Performance is improved by balancing the cached Web request load across multiple servers.
More servers can be added at any time to increase processing power. The redirection is transparent to the client. Frames that are not associated with HTTP requests are passed normally to the router. In the example figure on the previous page, an ACEswitch 180 is placed between the clients and the border gateway to the Internet. The switch will distribute HTTP requests equally to the web-cache servers based on the destination IP address of the requests.