Webcache

Description

The idea if webcache is to upload the shared data into an ISP proxy and leave it there for other clients to download it.

The whole webcache description can be found with full details in the original post. Plus, there are lot's of additional documentation pages all around the net, where Google is your friend ;)

History

This all began on 13th April 2003 at eMule's forums when sufcrusher posted this post. The whole history can be followed there up to the first eMule mods implementing it.

Pros and cons

Pros

• The most evident pro, and the main purpose of it, is that web proxies use to have lots of bandwidth and very high speeds so the data sharing speeds should be greatly boosted.

• Also, P2P clients use to generate heavy traffic on ISPs since it creates and destroys lots of connections in very little time and get/send large amounts of data. Using webcache would stop this connections from going through the ISPs since they would only get to the ISPs' proxies.

Cons

• Since all your data (or some of it) would pass through your ISP's proxy, your ISP would know what you are sharing, so your privacy would suffer very harmfully.

• It is not clear whether using ISPs' web proxies for things other than web data is legal. Even if it was in your country, legislations are different from state to state, so clients use to conform the largest amount of legislations they possibly can to avoid their users from suffering disgusting experiencies with the law. Also, allthough the webcache feature might be better for your ISP, it can be bad if the traffic is too high, so you might have your ISP from braking the contract with you and so, leaving you without connection.

• Like it or not, webcache at large scale becomes a DDoS to the ISP's http cache servers. The ISPs' clients will notice a worse quality of the service, and ISPs will blame the webcache, being right. What's worse: P2P developers that support webcache could be sued for developing DDoS tools and invite people to use it, ISPs can say they are losing clients because of the quality the lost in their services, and so, P2P developer teams could have big problems.

• The P2P networks are being heavily tracked by some governments since they believe they are used for illegal purposes. There is a popular sentence: "if it works, leave it as it is". Well, apply it here.

Implementing webcache

There are already some clients out there supporting webcache. Most of them are eMule mods. We'd like to advise that we do NOT recommend at all to use them. This mods bring down the P2P reputation and by using them you contribute in doing so.

Regarding aMule

Discussions about implementing webcache feature into aMule have appeared many times in aMule's forums although maybe the most relevant is this one.

Anyway, until further (rare to ever-happen) news, neither aMule nor eMule are going to officially support webcache in any future release.