eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by ProxyCacheTest

Web site caching is an efficient use of resources and another benefit of the MS proxy server. Since you can use the MS proxy server as a common connection point to the Internet, you can also use it to cache frequently accessed resources. The proxy server allocates a portion of the server’s hard disk space to store frequently accessed objects. Internet requests are more efficiently responded to through the use of fresh-cached data, which in the long run, helps in minimizing internet response times.

Caching can either be passive or active. Passive caching just stores objects as they are requested, so the cache is updated only when users request information. Active caching directs the server to refresh objects in the cache automatically.

You can selectively control the proxy server caching so that you can limit the size of cached objects, change the expiration limits (control the freshness of objects), and determine whether the server always caches, or always excludes from cache, certain content.

This test reports the performance statistics pertaining to this caching activity of the MS Proxy server. 

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Active_refresh_rate The rate at which data is retrieved from the Internet to refresh popular URLs in the URL cache. Kb/sec A low value indicates low refresh rate and a possible network problem.
Active_url_refresh The rate at which the URLs in the URL cache are refreshed from the internet URLs/sec A low value or 0(zero) indicates the non availability of URLs, or DNS servers from the internet.
Cache_size The total number of bytes currently available in the URL Cache Kb A high value indicates possible high usage of virtual memory on web proxy cache.
Url_commits The rate at which the URLs are committed  to the URLs cache URLs/sec A low value or 0 (zero) indicates low URL commits, low network resource availability.
Url_retrievals The rate at which the URLs are retrieved  from the URL cache. URLs/sec A low value indicates the low availability of the URLs from the proxy cache.
Urls_in_cache The current number of URLs in the URL cache Number A high value indicates possible low availability of  virtual memory.