Filtering Traffic

Traffic filtering can now be done by numerous devices. A short time ago, only Unix servers (with special modifications) could sort traffic streams by destination port. These days, however, routers, switches and (of course) Unix machines can filter IP traffic.

Which device you use to do your filtering depends on your load. For light loads, your cache server can do everything: the filtering, the redirection and the transparent caching. For heavier loads, you may want to use a seperate Unix machine, or you may want to get your router to filter the streams for you (only certain routers can do filtering fast at the hardware level: doing filtering on other routers will add additional load to the CPU). You could even get a so-called layer four switch, which can do filtering at gigabit ethernet speeds.