Proxy Server Experiment and Network Security with Changing Nature of the Web

Olatunde Abiona¹, Adeniran Oluwaranti², Ayodeji Oluwatope², Surura Bello², Clement Onime³, Mistura Sanni², Lawrence Kehinde⁴

¹Department of Computer Information Systems, Indiana University Northwest, Garry, USA.
²Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
³Information and Communication Technology Section, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.
⁴Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

DOI: 10.4236/ijcns.2014.712052                

Abstract

The total reliance on internet connectivity and World Wide Web (WWW) based services is forcing many organizations to look for alternative solutions for providing adequate access and response time to the demand of their ever increasing users. A typical solution is to increase the bandwidth; this can be achieved with additional cost, but this solution does not scale nor decrease users perceived response time. Another concern is the security of their network. An alternative scalable solution is to deploy a proxy server to provide adequate access and improve response time as well as provide some level of security for clients using the network. While some studies have reported performance increase due to the use of proxy servers, one study has reported performance decrease due to proxy server. We then conducted a six-month proxy server experiment. During this period, we collected access logs from three different proxy servers and analyzed these logs with Webalizer a web server log file analysis program. After a few years, in September 2010, we collected log files from another proxy server, analyzed the logs using Webalizer and compared our results. The result of the analysis showed that the hit rate of the proxy servers ranged between 21% - 39% and over 70% of web pages were dynamic. Furthermore clients accessing the internet through a proxy server are more secured. We then conclude that although the nature of the web is changing, the proxy server is still capable of improving performance by decreasing response time perceived by web clients and improved network security.

Keywords

Proxy Server, Network Security, Hit Ratio, Webalizer, Proxy Log Analysis

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Baentsch, M., Barum, L., Molter, G., Rothkugel, S. and Sturm, P. (1997) Enhancing the Web’s Infrastructure: From Caching to Replication. IEEE Internet Computing, 1, 18-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/4236.601083
[2]	Bestavros, A., Carter, R., Crovella, M., Cunha, C., Heddaya, A. and Mirdad, S. (1995) Application-Level Document Caching in the Internet. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Services in Distributed and Networked Environments (SDNE’95), Whistler, 166-173.
[3]	Cohen, E., Krishnamurthy, B. and Rexford, J. (1998) Improving End-to-End Performance of the Web Using Server Volumes and Proxy Filters. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM’98 Conference, Vancouver, 241-253.
[4]	Baentsch, M., Baum, L., Molter, G., Rothkugel, S. and Sturm, P. (1997) World Wide Web Caching: The Application-Level View of the Internet. IEEE Communications Magazine, 35, 170-178. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/35.587725
[5]	Zhang, L., Floyd, S. and Jacobson, V. (1997) Adaptive Web Caching. Proceedings of the NLANR Web Caching Workshop, Boulder.
[6]	Howard, R. and Jansen, B.J. (1998) A Proxy Server Experiment: An Indication of the Changing Nature of the Web. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN’98), Washington DC, 646-649.
[7]	Abiona, O.O., Onime, C.E., Oluwaranti, A.I., Adagunodo, E.R., Kehinde, L.O. and Radicella, S.M. (2006) Development of a Non Intrusive Network Traffic Monitoring and Analysis System. African Journal of Science and Technology, 7, 1-17.
[8]	Rousskov, A. and Soloviev, V. (1998) On Performance of Caching Proxies. Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS Conference.
[9]	Caceres, R., Douglis, F., Feldmann, A., Glass, G. and Rabinovich, M. (1998) Web Proxy Caching: The Devil Is in the Details. ACM Performance Evaluation Review, 26, 11-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/306225.306230
[10]	Abdulla, G., Fox, E., Abrams, M. and Williams, S. (1997) WWW Proxy Traffic Characterization with Application to Caching. Technical Report TR-97-03, Computer Science Department, Virginia Tech.
[11]	Rousskov, A. and Soloviev, V. (1998) On Performance of Caching Proxies. Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS Joint International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems, 26, 272-273.
[12]	DiDio, L. (1997) Proxy Servers Gain User Appeal. Computerworld, 31, 16.
[13]	Machlis, S. (1997) Planning Blunts Web Traffic Spikes. Computerworld, 31, 6.
[14]	Williams, S., Abrams, M., Standridge, C.R., Abdulla, G. and Fox, E.A. (1997) Removal Policies in Network Caches for World-Wide Web Documents. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 26, 293- 305.
[15]	Abrams, M., Stanbridge, C., Abdulla, G., Williams, S. and Fox, E. (1995) Caching Proxies: Limitations and Potentials. Boston. http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~succeed/WWW4/WWW4.html
[16]	Glassman, S. (1994) A Caching Relay for the World-Wide Web. 1st International World-Wide Web Conference, Geneva, 25-27 May 1994, 69-76.
[17]	Busari, M. and Williamson, C.L. (2001) Simulation Evaluation of a Heterogeneous Web Proxy Caching Hierarchy. Proceedings of the IEEE MASCOTS, Cincinnati, 15-18 August 2001, 379-388.
[18]	Fan, L., Cao, P., Almeida, J. and Broder, A. (1998) Summary Cache: A Scalable Wide-Area Web Cache Sharing Protocol. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM’98 Conference, Vancouver, September 1998, 254-265.
[19]	Mahanti, A., Williamson, C. and Eager, D. (2000) Traffic Analysis of a Web Proxy Caching Hierarchy. IEEE Network, 14, 16-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/65.844496
[20]	Yu, P. and MacNair, E. (1998) Performance Study of a Collaborative Method for Hierarchical Caching in Proxy Servers. Proceedings of World-Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, 14-18 April 1998, 215-224.
[21]	Tewari, R., Dahlin, M., Vin, H. and Kay, J. (1999) Beyond Hierarchies: Design Considerations for Distributed Caching on the Internet. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Austin.
[22]	Busari, M. and Williamson, C.L. (2001) On the Sensitivity of Web Proxy Cache Performance to Workload Characteristics. Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM, Anchorage, 22-26 April 2001, 1225-1234.
[23]	The Webalizer Home Page. http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
[24]	Vass, J., Harwell, J., Bharadvaj, H. and Joshi, A. (1998) The World Wide Web: Everything You (N)ever Wanted to Know about Its Servers. IEEE Potentials, 17, 33-37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/45.721730