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The Second Life viewer can download a significant amount of data for every location you visit (easily hundreds of MB). In order to save on repeatedly fetching the same data and to speed up the rendering of places you visit frequently the viewer has a local cache that can be up to 10GB in size.

The viewer cache is less than ideal and while it tries very hard to be smart, doesn't get it right nearly as often as it should and can not be shared between different computers / viewers. How often have you teleported home after exploring only to find you have to wait while it downloads again.

A squid proxy cache acts as an intermediary between the viewer and Linden Lab. It fetches the data requested by the viewer and stores it. Should it be requested again, it provides the copy it has already downloaded almost instantly.

This makes up for the viewer cache's tendency to forgot all the things you would rather it didn't and allows you to run with a much smaller local cache. It can easily be shared by multiple computers in the same household.

The size of a squid proxy cache is only limited by the amount of disk space you can spare, and it can run quite happily on older / recycled hardware. The software is free open source.

This guide based one published on the Phoenix / Firestorm Wiki and requires some technical ability, It will work with any recent Second Life viewer.