My OperaProxy connections limitation
Friday, June 5, 2009 7:03:25 PM
Polipo is a caching web proxy that I have used to correct the situation when using a proxy such as Privoxy orProxomitron in conjunction with Opera where the proxy is counted as one server. In Opera's network settings there are options for limiting the number of connections on a per server basis. But when browsing via a proxy Opera will only make as many connections to it as the amount specified in the Max connections per server setting.
If you have 32 connections in total and 8 per server, your proxy has 8 connections to play with (4 of these can be persistent connections), because the proxy is counted as one server by Opera. If you use settings of 32 connections in total and 32 per server, your proxy has the full total of 32 connections to play with, but you could potentially be connecting to a server on the internet with 32 connections instead of a more optimal smaller number such as 4 or 8.
In many proxies there is no real control over how these connections are balanced between remote servers in such a situation. If you set your existing proxy to forward to Polipo, then this behaviour will be corrected by Polipo's load-balancing mechanisms. Polipo can be configured to make a set number of connections per server and I have configured it to make up to 8 per server to mimic Opera's default.
The following packages are available for anyone to try. I would personally recommend trying polipo-dw.zip, because this contains the Deadwood caching DNS resolver which reduces latency by caching DNS queries. It should be used by people who have trouble getting Polipo to work and is especially recommended for users of dialup and satellite connections who have much higher latencies than ADSL users. Satellite and dialup users also ought to edit the Polipo config file to enable HTTP pipelining which is disabled by default.
Unlike the default distribution of Polipo, I have used XYNTService to run it as a Windows service so that it stays in the background and starts automatically with Windows. GMPBBS provides the random number generation to seed Deadwood.
polipo.zip
polipo-dw.zip
If you have 32 connections in total and 8 per server, your proxy has 8 connections to play with (4 of these can be persistent connections), because the proxy is counted as one server by Opera. If you use settings of 32 connections in total and 32 per server, your proxy has the full total of 32 connections to play with, but you could potentially be connecting to a server on the internet with 32 connections instead of a more optimal smaller number such as 4 or 8.
In many proxies there is no real control over how these connections are balanced between remote servers in such a situation. If you set your existing proxy to forward to Polipo, then this behaviour will be corrected by Polipo's load-balancing mechanisms. Polipo can be configured to make a set number of connections per server and I have configured it to make up to 8 per server to mimic Opera's default.
The following packages are available for anyone to try. I would personally recommend trying polipo-dw.zip, because this contains the Deadwood caching DNS resolver which reduces latency by caching DNS queries. It should be used by people who have trouble getting Polipo to work and is especially recommended for users of dialup and satellite connections who have much higher latencies than ADSL users. Satellite and dialup users also ought to edit the Polipo config file to enable HTTP pipelining which is disabled by default.
Unlike the default distribution of Polipo, I have used XYNTService to run it as a Windows service so that it stays in the background and starts automatically with Windows. GMPBBS provides the random number generation to seed Deadwood.
polipo.zip
polipo-dw.zip
