Escorpiom,
If you are convinced or better, have measured that proxy improve internet browsing speed, this is very good.
I can explain why this result is seldom achieved, however I would like to start with another comment:
HTTP proxy is used for 2 main reasons:
- security
- performance
Security is almost self-explanatory:
- profiling, authorization, blacklist, ad removal etc...
Performance is more questionable because:
1 - your browser brings its own local cache
- HTTPS is not cached
- more and more ignorant web developer are wrongly using "pragma no-cache"
2 - accessing web page directly will bring the page to your browser, directly (kind of) where it will stored in local cache(*).
- doing the same via proxy, you will send the request to proxy that will act as web client itself, retrieve page and forward it to you while storing it in proxy cache(*)
- doing the same with transparent proxy is like with explicit proxy except that client is not aware of proxy in the middle, thus sends request that is intercepted then redirected by proxy, so, slightly slower, even if you don't perceive it without measuring tool.
3 - proxy cache mechanism however as some benefit (do not think I'm trying to demonstrate that proxy is always slower
): when one given page has already been accessed by someone else in your organization, then you will get it from proxy. Because of this, proxy efficiency directly depends on the number of users, reason why I said: with few users, proxy is likely slower than no proxy.
If you are not convinced, I suggest you give a closer look, using tool like HTTP analyser.
On top of that, tuning proxy is not an obvious task, much more complex than debating about transparent vs. explicit proxy.
Large cache size, even on fast disk, is not enough.
- some other parameters have more impact
- too large cache size will make it slower because of the amount of file it will store.