ISPPlanet Cache Review Series
During the coming weeks, ISP-Planet will be conducting a series of six individual web cache product reviews, culminating with a final comparative summary article. Each individual review will focus on ISP-class caching features. A lab evaluation will be used to assess cache manageability: how easy is the product to install, configure, monitor, and upgrade. Each product will be installed in Core Competence's lab network, where tools like Web Polygraph are used to generate traffic. This hands-on evaluation is used to verify proper configuration and evaluate each reviewed product's management and monitoring features.

The lab evaluations in our review series will not benchmark performance. To do so correctly is difficult, and this ground has already been covered by the National Laboratory of Applied Network Research (NLANR), a National Science Foundation network research organization. ISP-Planet will report on NLANR's planned January 2000 cache performance bakeoff once results become available.

Caching Appliance Style: Quantex WebXL 2000  [January 10, 2000]  
Here's a stable, economical, easy-to-set-up system running Novell Internet Cache System software.
Fail-Safe Caching: InfoLibria DynaCache  [January 17, 2000]  
This is a solid web cache for high-availability networks—with a price that reflects the target market.
NICS with Integrated Management: Compaq TaskSmart [January 24, 2000]
An appliance-style cache system that addresses the management needs of both novice and experienced cache admins.
Predictive Caching: CacheFlow 545   [February 3, 2000]
The CacheFlow 545 offers many innovative features, including an intriguing hybrid config interface and a proactive 'adaptive refresh' algorithm.
Multiprotocol Caching: NetCache C720s   [February 14, 2000]
The NetCache C720s provides a full-featured, versatile platform for ISPs who want to cache streaming multimedia and/or news, as well as Web traffic.
Do-It-Yourself Caching: Squid   [February 28, 2000]
A well-known open-source solution, Squid is a great low-cost way to get into caching. A stable installation requires farily hefty hardware, however, plus extensive tuning.