Web Proxies

Proxies: Introduction

A proxy is an intermediary application that sits between clients and servers.

Typically used to Control access, record activities and convert between protocols. Proxies exist for many different protocols SMTP/email DNS HTTP/Web IRC/IM/Chat.

Proxies: Web Objects

With a web proxy, we have the opportunity to cache and reuse certain server responses. When caching; we usually talk about “objects”.

For example: An HTML page A JPEG image A PDF document Flash animation.

Objects are identified by URL (Uniform Resource Locator).Note that sometimes the term “web page” refers to a number of different objects (HTML, images, etc).

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Alternative PHP Cache (APC)

APC is an Open Source PHP accelerator for caching intermediate code from scripts. Intermediate code is the internal memory structures produced during compilation that are fed into the executor. APC increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. APC stores and executes compiled PHP scripts from shared memory.

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