[MLB-WIRELESS] (Squid Proxy) Paths clearing for wireless networks

[John Dalton]

I gather each person on a cable service has a monthly
download limit.  Does each person's 'month' finish at
the same time?  If not, the following idea (an extension
of the original cache idea) may work:

Say 300 people on a wireless network have a cable Intenet
connections.

Each of them runs a cache.  Each person has a 3GB/month download limit.
For most of the month, each cache simply serves up stored pages
and does not access the Internet.

Six hours before the end of the month, each cache is
allowed to pass requests through to the Internet, allowing
that cache to be replenished.  A cache will stop fetching
requests when either the month is up, or the monthly cable download
limit for that minus a safety factor is reached.  The safety
factor should be chosen so there is negligible probability of
the person who pays for the cable connection exceeding their
download limit in the 6 hours before the month is up.  This person
could also decrease the '6 hour' time to reduce the probability of
going over their cable download limit.

When a person inside the community network wants a page, they
search each cache in turn (in random order?) until their request
is found.  If the page they want is not already cached, they will
eventually hit an 'enabled' cache and their request will be fetched
from the Internet.

The net result of this scheme is that:
1) The community network has continuous Internet access (due to
the random distribution of 'months end').
2) It is very rare for a person who pays for a cable connection goes over their
download limit, due to the community network.
3) It has close to zero impact on the Internet usage of people
who pay for cable connections.

If 'month's end' is the same for all users, the scheme could be modified
to pick a random time, with some fixed data volume.  The chosen data
volume should be small enough to not impact the cable users.

Getting really fancy, the data volumne or 'enable time' could be
automatically adapted over time to fit usage patterns for that
cable connection.

Regards
John

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