ReadWriteEnterprise

If you are trying to implement a content caching solution on your enterprise network, you know that serving up dynamic content is a cat-and-mouse game. The major Web content delivery sites want to deliver fresh content, and you want to try to cache that content, so that subsequent views of it don't consume additional network bandwidth on your Internet links.

But what you probably didn't know is how often these sites change their delivery mechanisms, making it hard for any caching to be effective.

A story that ran this weekend in the NY Times about how students are getting around outright Facebook network blocks at school caught my attention. As kids prepare to return to their classrooms, it might be a good moment to reconsider whether such blocks are truly effective.

Yes, the notion of proxy servers has been around almost as long as the Web itself, and students can easily find the location of dozens of these services that are used to circumvent Facebook (and other objectionable content). It takes about a minute to type in a Google search and load up your URL in their handy forms and off you go, block or no block. Certainly, some network admins are more diligent about blocking these proxy sites, but given the number of them, it is a losing battle.