Setting the Network Connectivity Mode

You can connect or disconnect the proxy server computer from the network. This feature makes it convenient to install the proxy on a portable computer that you can use for demonstrations.

When the proxy is disconnected from the network, documents are returned directly from the cache—the proxy can’t do up-to-date checks, so the documents are retrieved very quickly (the documents might not be up to date; see Chapter 12, Caching for more information on caching).

Also, if you are not connected to a network, connections never hang because the proxy server is aware that there is no network and never tries to connect to a remote server. You can use this no-network setting when the network is down but the proxy server computer is running.

Keep in mind that running the proxy disconnected from the network means that you will eventually be accessing stale data from the cache. Also, running without the network makes the proxy security features unnecessary.

Proxy Server offers four network connectivity modes:

• Default mode is derived from the configuration of the most general matching object.

• Normal mode is the normal operating mode for the proxy. The proxy retrieves documents from the content server if they are not already in the cache. If they are in the cache, they may be checked against the content server to determine if they are up to date. If a cached file has changed, it is replaced with the current copy.

• Fast-demo mode is intended for giving smooth demonstrations when the network is available. If a document is found in the cache, the content server is not contacted, not even to find out if the document has changed. This mode gets rid of any latency created by waiting for the content server to respond. If a document is not in the cache, it is retrieved from the content server and cached. The fast-demo mode has less latency than the normal mode, but can occasionally return stale data, because once it has a copy of a document, it does not do up-to-date checks on it.

• No-network mode is designed for portable computers during the time they are not connected to the network. The proxy returns the document if it is in the cache or returns an error if it is not. The proxy never tries to contact the content server, which prevents the proxy from hanging and timing out while trying to get a connection that doesn’t exist.

To change the running mode for the proxy server

Steps

1. Access the Server Manager and click the Routing tab.

2. Click the Set Connectivity Mode link. The Set Connectivity Mode page displays.

3. Select the resource from the drop-down list or click the Regular Expression button, enter a regular expression and click OK.

4. Select the mode you want.

5. Click OK.

6. Click Restart Required. The Apply Changes page displays.

7. Click the Restart Proxy Server button to apply the changes.