In a message of 01-Jan-01 Franco Coccini wrote:
> I recived, from list, a lot of kindly answer.
> In one, tell me to set 200-300 mb of disk cache, in other one 8192K (8megs).
> Which is the right one? ( i've a lot of space on disk, 56k modem, no gfx
> card, 040, OS3.0)
There is no right answer. That is why you didn't get one single answer --
and this is also why it can be configured. If there was one answer there
would have been no reason to make it part of the preferences.
You have to know the purpose of the cache for you to decide. The cache
serves two purposes. The first is, that to reduce the amount of data that
has to be transferred, the browser can store a page/picture locally on
your computer. These stored files are the cache. The next time you visit
the same site, the browser only checks to see if the page/picture has been
updated. If it hasn't changed, the browser loads the page/picture from the
local cache which naturally often much faster than having to transfer the
page/picture again. If the page/picture has changed, the browser transfer
the new page/picture and update the cache. The second purpose is sort of a
byproduct of the way the cache works. Having a cache enables you to browse
while offline, because the browser reads the page/picture from the cache
instead of trying to fetch them remotely.
How large should your cache be?
I don't know. I used a cache of 256 MB with much success. I don't doubt
that a lot of what was stored in the cache was pages and pictures from
sites that I never would visit again, but so what -- sooner or later they
expire. The important part is to have a cache so large that the sites you
regularly visit never expire. If you only visit the same three sites and
nothing else, then a cache of 1 MB might be sufficient. However, if you
visit these three sites regularly and inbetween many, many random sites,
then a cache of 200 MB might be needed to make sure your three regular
sites never expire.
If you use a large cache, you will also need a fast filesystem. FFS is
simply too slow for a cache of 256 MB. AFS/PFS or whatever they are called
is needed. Smaller caches will probably work quite well with FFS. I
don't know where this upper FFS limit is, perhaps at 20 MB, perhaps 100 MB,
perhaps at 150 MB -- I don't know. If you use FFS you will have to find
this for yourself.
I used the 256 MB cache with my 56K modem. When I got my 256/128 DSL
connection I shortly afterwards completely removed the cache, because
I find I get better performance without a cache with a connection of
that speed.
Uffe Holst
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