Dtac Gprs Web Caching Proxy

[phazey]

Anyone know of a web caching proxy suitable for use with DTAC's GPRS service? If not, does anyone know what ISP DTAc uses for it's internet connectivity.

Ta v much.

./P

[joka]

I think dtac using KSC for internet, the smtp used to or still does have ksc in the address.

[phazey]

You're right. After i plugged my head back into reality (giving up smoking) i did a lookup of my DTAC gateway IP and it is indeed owned by KSC. having a bit or toruble navigating the site, but it's coming down quite quickly - the fastest i've seen GPRS go tbh (58kbps) - wonder what EDGE will be like when i'm near a supported cell....

Edit: proxy.ksc.net.th port 8080

Edited October 8, 2006 by phazey

[autonomous_unit]

Considering that the first step from your GPRS modem/phone to the rest of the IP world (including DTAC's servers) is 60 Kb/s and 2 seconds round-trip latency, I'll be surprised if a caching proxy does you much good... try some ping tests against the closest Thai server and the most far-flung US or European server, and notice the latency hardly varies... the real problem is not the speed of getting content from the remote server to DTAC's routers, but getting it through the wireless part of the path, which will also be between you and DTAC's/KSC's proxy.

You would need a filtering and compressing proxy. Some providers have ones that will decimate pictures in web traffic, so that the downloaded images are much smaller (but also horrible to look at). Having a proxy that also filters out advertisements and a lot of other redirection and "marketing bugs" will help because it is all of the excess round-trips implied in these web pages which slow the loading speed over GPRS. This filtering proxy needs to be "on the other side" of the GPRS link, i.e. a hosted server somewhere, and not running on your PC.

Unless you have multiple clients behind your GPRS link, I think trying to run a local caching proxy would be pointless. Just make sure your browser is caching enough of what it sees.

[phazey]

ping to my next hop is circa 600ms, and peaked at 71Kbps.

The caching does me the world of good as it's got way more bandwidth to retreive the pages - i'm now getting a constant 65Kbps from Dtac now, it's definatly an improvement.

I think the filtering/compression software you are refering to is RabbIT3 - that would be better but my nearest host is at my co-lo/ISP network in a different country, so still useless....although locally the users I have tested it with loved it. My server platform spat the dummy enough times to force me to drop it tho....and java based....nuff said. Shame since as most providers are now predominantly broadband, they forget about the modem/slow link users.

Ho Hum...perhaps we should start a petition for web sites to enable mod_gzip

[autonomous_unit]

Wow, I've never seen 600ms ping time on any GPRS->internet path, not over AIS, DTAC, nor T-Mobile USA service. It has always been around 1800ms to any host I could think of, i.e. trying to use hosts "local" to wherever I and the provider were located.

Now that has me wondering if there is something wonky with the Linux pppd/USB acm/motorola phone stack I use...

I had very good luck using compressed ssh-forwarding to a remote privoxy proxy, to get some of the ad-filtering combined with gzip of the http sessions. But the latency still sucked.

[monty]

I've got pocket ping installed on my GPRS PDA (O2 XDAIIs), and pretty much any test results in the first ping taking a bit over 1000msec, with the subsequent pings (to the same address) coming in at around 700msec...

Using AIS gprs post paid in the Chonburi area (15 km outside Pattaya)

Strangely, my friend's HP pda, which support Edge, pings much slower (2 secs) but only when connected to an edge cell. When connected to a cell which does not support edge (fall back to the regular gprs) it pings the same as my PDA...

[Tywais]

I've got pocket ping installed on my GPRS PDA (O2 XDAIIs), and pretty much any test results in the first ping taking a bit over 1000msec, with the subsequent pings (to the same address) coming in at around 700msec...

Using AIS gprs post paid in the Chonburi area (15 km outside Pattaya)

Strangely, my friend's HP pda, which support Edge, pings much slower (2 secs) but only when connected to an edge cell. When connected to a cell which does not support edge (fall back to the regular gprs) it pings the same as my PDA...

I suspect the first ping takes longer due to having to resolve the DNS address. Try using just the ip number of a site, should be consistant - first ping or not.

[monty]

Indeed,

Tested and confirmed, pinging directly to an IP address does not result in the first ping being slower...