Hi,
Recently DCU has removed the mandatory use of their proxy
(proxy.dcu.ie) for web access and have opened outbound ports 80 and
443. The Redbrick subnet is included in this move.
This now means that we don't need to have the proxy env vars setup to
connect to the web. This doesn't, however, mean we should not use the
proxy.
The benefits for using the proxy as I see are:
* Possible caching (albeit marginal impact given our connection speed)
* Small level of anonymity provided the X-Forwarded header isn't used
Disadvantages to using the proxy
* A bottleneck for web traffic, slower speeds at peak times
* ISS has a very simple log for us - which isn't necessarily a bad thing
Thoughts in general? I would sway towards removing the use of the DCU
proxy. We will of course still need to keep the SOCKS proxy for ssh
and non port 80 and 443 traffic.
Vadim
