Section C: General HTTP configuration options

About the General HTTP configuration options

To access the General HTTP configuration options in the Appliance Manager, select Setup tab > HTTP > General. You are not required to configure these options. The initial setup configuration and default settings are appropriate for most environments.

Enabling and disabling HTTP

You can cause NetCache to start or stop servicing HTTP traffic using the HTTP Enable check box on the HTTP - General page. This option is enabled by default.

There are certain conditions under which you might want to disable HTTP service. For example, you might not want to allow HTTP access to NetCache administrative functions, or you do not want the Web cache to service HTTP-encapsulated streaming requests.

Enabling authentication for HTTP requests

To cause NetCache to begin authenticating users for HTTP requests, select the Authenticate HTTP Requests option.

Make sure you have configured the authentication option you want to use before enabling this option. If you have not configured NetCache to use a specific type of authentication, users will not be able to use NetCache to service Web requests.

Select and configure the type of user authentication you want to use on the Authentication pages under the Setup tab in the Appliance Manager.

Note
If you want to require users to supply a user name and password when using Gopher, see the online Help associated with this protocol.

About the Client Connection Timeout option

You can cause the HTTP connection used for clients to drop after a specified time of inactivity. This option is enabled by default for 10 seconds and can be increased on the HTTP - General page.

About configuring the HTTP Proxy Ports option

The entries in the HTTP Proxy Ports option are the ports on which NetCache listens for client Web requests. However, you might need to configure this option differently, depending on which functions NetCache is performing on your network. These ports can be entered on the HTTP - General page.

Setting for Web cache

If you are configuring NetCache to run as a Web cache, you can leave the HTTP Proxy Ports option set to its default value of 3128. You can change the default value if you prefer a different port number to be used for client Web requests, or you can add more port settings to this option.

Setting for transparent proxying

If you are configuring NetCache to run as a transparent Web cache, add port 80 to the HTTP Proxy Ports option.

Additional options on the HTTP - General page

You can configure other options on the Appliance Manager HTTP - General page to specify how the NetCache appliance handles requests.

The options in the following table are available.

If you want to...	Use this option...
Configure the appliance to transparently redirect requests for URLs to specified local mirror sites	URLs to Rewrite
Configure the appliance to not send the client IP address when attempting to fetch content from a Web server	Client Privacy Enable
Suppress error messages that refer to the presence of a proxy-cache server to clients	Do Not Report Errors to Selected Clients
Suppress information about the presence of this appliance in the Via header for HTTP requests	Suppress Writing to Via Header Request
Suppress information about the presence of this appliance in the Via header for HTTP responses	Suppress Writing to Via Header Response
Configure the appliance to maintain a client connection beyond the servicing of a single request	Client-Side Persistence Enable
Configure the appliance to maintain a Web server connection beyond the servicing of a single request	Server-Side Persistence Enable