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Originally Posted by pem
Hmm, you're an NTL Tech ? In that case could you please explain to me how this will screw up "load balance" (indeed, load balance of what ?).
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As I understand it (and again I may not understand it correctly) the 'load balance' issues fall into two areas.
Firstly the 'load' on a given proxy server. If regions A,B,C and D's proxies are all failing then users tend tpo move to region E's proxy server (in very simple terms). This in turn puts more load on region E's server and thus increases the chance that this proxy will become 'overloaded' or 'unbalanced'. However as I have argued above, giving users the option to just not use a proxy at all would mean imo, that if region A,B,C and D's proxies were 'playing up' then most users would simply turn off their local proxy, thus helping load problems on server E not hindering them.
The other area where 'load balancing' is a potential problem would be on the internal NTL network links between regions. In an example whereby many of region A's customers are using region E's proxy server, then more traffic passes between region A and region E than would if all of regions A's cutomers were using region A's proxy server (or not using a proxy server at all, if they had such a choice). I personally do not feel this is a valid argument against giving users the option of not being forced through an NTL proxy for the same reasons as the 'server load balance' argument above. In addition to this, it is my iunderstanding that NTL's national fiber network, that carries the traffic between regions, is not even remotely 'oveloaded' and even with the descrepancies caused by users using proxies not in their local region has vast amounts of unused capacity (unlike the local distribution network).