A distributed Internet caching system

Abstract

This paper describes a distributed Web caching system for the Internet. In the proposed structure, every client computer in the network takes on the additional role of a cache server, serving the objects it had previously requested and received to other client computers that also request the object. A comprehensive set of protocol for the access, storage and serving function is developed. The proposed protocol guarantees data consistency between the original server object and that in the cache. The system also has the largest storage capacity, as well as having the highest level of reliability possible for a network of such structure.