Digex was the first carrier to publicly announce support for the inktomi
proxy.
http://www.inktomi.com/new/press/caching.html
From memory, the alteon switch was a layer 4 switch that changed the
destination interface.
The Solaris box then, in turn, pulled the destination address out of the
received packet, and fired up an outgoing connection based on that
destination address. I did the same thing with Squid and IPFilter on my
personal solaris box, transparently proxying. I didn't think that the
Alteon talked any special protocol, just re-routed traffic based on
destination port.
How does the Mirror Image box do anything different? I thought this was a
common hack used by MI, NetApp, NetCache and the Squid users out there, do
they all do something fancier/simpler?
Best regards,
Jamie Scheinblum - FASTNET(tm) / You Tools Corporation
jamie@fast.net (888)321-FAST(3278) http://www.fast.net
FASTNET - Business and Personal Internet Solutions
The views stated above are representative of myself, not my employer.