I'm just amazed at the use that our photo gallery is getting, over 200 hits this month alone (and we're only half way through it).  The only complaint I have is AOL.  I know several people, my parents included, who have aol, but because of their network setup, I can't tell who it is...(I can see everyone else in case you didn't know, right down to the city you live in most cases).  AOL uses a proxy server, or I should say they use several hundred proxy servers.  You may make three webpage request in a single session, but all three will most likely go through three different proxies which drives my statistics monitor crazy! 
    What's a proxy?  Glad you asked!  If you run a network and you have say 20 people behind it, you can run a proxy that makes all the webpage requests for you...so I goto www.hofftech.net, but my request goes to proxy(XX).aol.com and that machine makes the page request, then returns the results to your computer AND in most cases; keeps a copy of the page in memory.  This way if someone else on the network wants that same page and the page hasn't expired AOL doesn't have to go the internet to get the content, it can just grab it from it's own memory.  Another feature is content filtering, you may have heard of "NetZero's High Speed Dialup" well their proxy works the same as AOL's, but as the content comes across the line it looks for pictures (files that end in ,jpg, .gif, .tiff, .bmp, etc.) and runs them through filters to drop the photo quality then gives you the resulting lower quality photo but makes it feel like the page loaded faster.  You are now that much smarter!