IE Cache

[FLEX42]

Anyone have any tips on what is a sensible cache size for temporary internet files as IE help file doesn’t give much guidance. I run a P3 450MHz with 96 mb RAM and 13 gb hard drive. Currently using 20mb.

[SLF 999]

I was always told the more the better I use 200Mb on a 6Gb disk and no problems.
But Im willing to be corrected.

[Mac the Knife]

Interesting question. Believed I was sure of the answer but thought I'd better trawl the Web for more opinions. Even more interesting. Too tired (Free Flap Fatigue) to put it all together now, but hopefully will get answer out tomorrow.

[SLF 999]

I did some investigation as well and have found that although it is recommended that more is better, there is an optimum point where performance suffers as a result, now the only problem here is what is the optimim point ?, thats what I cant find
One thing to think about as well, is adjusting how often to update the page
Quote from Microsoft :-
While it's true that the more files you can load from your hard disk, the faster your browsing speed, it's also true that those pages on the Web might have changed since being stored on your computer. You might not want to miss fresh content just to save a little time. Fortunately, in addition to the size of the cache, you can also customize how often Internet Explorer checks the Web for updated content and downloads it to your computer.

The Settings dialog box offers three ways to check for newer versions of pages that are stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder:

Every visit to the page
You're assured of the most current content, but it's slower to browse previously viewed pages.
Every time you start Internet Explorer
Your first visit to a page will be checked, but subsequent visits in the same browsing session will not be checked.
Never
This option is fastest, but you could be viewing old content from the cache. To refresh the page, press F5 on your keyboard. You'll connect to the page on the Web. (This downloads the information to the Temporary Internet files folder.)
(Note: If a site has expiring content, such as news or sports, Internet Explorer checks for new content regardless of the setting.)

Try several combinations of these options and cache size to find the best fit for your needs. You may need to use the settings for a few days to fully gauge how they are working.

[Mac the Knife]

OK, this a summary of what I could find and figure out - I'm open to corrections and amplification. A short discourse on caching is required.

As you know, the idea of the cache is to save copies of recently visited web pages so that they don't have to be downloaded from your ISP all over again. ISPs also have caches (large ones) on their servers so that they don't waste bandwidth on their backbone downloading frequently visited pages from web sites. So the page that you view may have come either from your cache or a cache on one of the dozens of servers between you and the requested website or, finally from the requested website itself.

Caches are a sort of mixed blessing, they can reduce the time you spend waiting for pages to load considerably (particularly noticable if you have a slow phoneline connection) and by reducing your ISPs need to access the Internet backbones they optimise their allocated bandwidth. Good so far, but pages stored in caches becomes stale (i.e. out-of-date) rapidly if the original web page is changed frequently. Servers and browsers all therefore have limits on cache size and more importantly on the length of time a page will be stored in the cache before being judged "stale" and probably out of date. After this time the browser (or the server) will request a fresh copy of the page from the originating site.

Content providers don't as a rule like caching much since it means that "old" (stale) content might inadvertently be viewed from their site rather than the latest information. Imagine if people were looking at last weeks or last months prices or product ranges! So they include HTML tags in their page which instruct the browser whether to cache the page or not, or, how many days/hours/minutes to allow it to remain in cache before it is deemed stale and reloaded afresh. Of course, for popular sites some caching must be allowed otherwise the Content providers servers would be overloaded with repeated requests. There are various algorithms (based on hits, changes and bandwidth available) which allow the Content provider to determine a best strategy.

Finally, Browsers like IE or Netscape allow the end-user some control over the process; you can set the browser to:

Check for new versions of stored pages
1) Every visit (Very slow)
2) Every time the browser starts (A bit better)
3) Automatically (The browser uses internal rules - good compromise)
4) Never (A lot of outdated pages, unless HTML forces a refresh)

NOTE that "Refresh" or F5 will force your browser to reload a page from your ISP, but it will NOT force your ISP's server to reload it from source (so the page might still be out of date). To force a reload from source, append /? to the URL.

Finally, the amount of disk space to use...

"Internet Explorer must download a Web page, and any necessary files such as graphics, sound, or .avi files, to the Cache folder before the page can be displayed. Even though the cache is set to zero percent, Internet Explorer requires a persistent cache for the current session. The persistent cache requires 4 MB or 1 percent of the logical drive size, whichever is greater.
After you set the Microsoft Internet Explorer cache to zero percent, pages are still cached. When you set the History setting to 0, sites are still cached in the History folder."

"By default, Internet Explorer sets aside roughly 3% of the system drive to use as the Web cache. On today's super-size disk drives, that can cause the cache to balloon to hundreds of megabytes. That's far more space than you need, and on most systems it's too big for Internet Explorer to manage comfortably. To avoid these problems and improve performance, keep Internet Explorer's cache under control. I prefer to keep the maximum size of the Web cache to no more than 20-40MB in size. You might want to experiment with different sizes to see what works best on your system."

So, after a lot of webtrawling I have concluded that my 500MB cache (out of 20GB) was far too big and have reduced it to 100MB (which still may be too big) and I may drop it to 60MB.

Thanks for a thought provoking question. The answer is that 20MB is a bit small and you should probably increase it to 40MB (for your 13GB drive and machine).

MTK

BTW, the History folder has nothing to do with caching, but contains links to (not stored copies of) pages that you have visited, and you can determine the number of days that the saved links are kept for. 20 days seems to be the default, though I set mine for 30. It doesn't take up much disk space even if you set it to the ridiculous maximum of 999 (though it might slow up the brower loading).

[FLEX42]

Cheers both, now I'll go and have a fiddle.

May the sun shine on you both in Capetown and Edinburgh :cool:

[PaperTiger]

Finally, Browsers like IE or Netscape allow the end-user some control over the process; you can set the browser to:

Check for new versions of stored pages
1) Every visit (Very slow)
2) Every time the browser starts (A bit better)
3) Automatically (The browser uses internal rules - good compromise)
4) Never (A lot of outdated pages, unless HTML forces a refresh)

We discussed this refresh stuff here a couple of months ago. For some unexplained reason, the settings in IE do not always take effect. To ensure it's doing what you want you have to check the registry, see http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q201/5/35.ASP
Then there's those pages which have a Response.Expires = 0 command and will reload anyway whether you like it or not.