OWT has implemented a powerful web caching technology that can speed your downloading of web pages substantially. Utilizing this technology is optional, however, so read on to learn about this service.

Caching (cash'-ing) is simply the process of storing a file locally so that if it is needed again in the near future you will have fast access to that file. There are two kinds of web caching: client and server based. Your web browser supports client side caching and will store pages on your hard drive up to the amount of space you have allocated for that process. The next time you need that document your browser will look on your hard drive first before downloading it from the Internet.

Server based caching does basically the same thing but all users accessing the Internet through that server will share a common set of cached files. If someone else has recently downloaded a web page through our cache server and your browser requests that page it will be delivered to your browser directly from our cache server rather than traveling through the Internet to its ultimate destination and fetching the page. For those sites that are supported by ample bandwidth the savings can be minimal, but for those sites that are very busy or the route to them travels through a congested connection the time savings can be very substantial.

Obviously, the more people that use the cache server the more likely the page you request will be contained locally and thus be downloaded faster. To assist in this we have peered with other cache networks and common pages on the Internet are "preloaded" into our cache server throughout the day. This will increase the likelihood that the page you are interested in will be found in the cache.

Configuring Your Web Browser To Use Our Cache Server

Unlike most Internet Service Providers OWT does not force this technology on you and transparently cache every connection. Instead we simply urge you to configure your web browser to support the cache server. See our configuration document for more information and assistance with your specific browser.

Our cache server supports: http, https and ftp protocols but http is really the most important protocol for you to configure.

There are a few sites - usually requiring more than average security that will not coexist with caching technologies well. For this reason we don't cache by default. However, it is quite simple to configure your browser to ignore the cache server for certain URLs or disable the technology altogether on demand.

What To Expect

While the cache server will improve the overall speed of your web browsing experience you will not benefit from the improvement noticeably on every page downloaded. First, there may be a short delay before your page begins to download while the server fetches the page for you. However, once the server has your page it will then be able to feed this page to your browser, on average, faster than the remote site would have. This latency is more noticeable on faster connections.

Many pages, such as news headline sites, change their content frequently. Usually the cache server will recognize that the page has changed since it last downloaded it and will update the page anyway. Graphics from that page that have not changed will still be downloaded to you at improved speeds. However, if for some reason you feel a site is not being updated simply hold the Shift-key down while clicking on Refresh or Reload on your browser and you should see the current version of that page.

We have found this to be a marvelous technology and it has drastically improved most users web performance. Especially when a site is very busy, the cached pages will come up much quicker and may be the only way you can view some pages as the site may be temporarily unavailable due to excessive traffic. We strongly urge you to give this technology a try.