Domain caching: building Web services for live events

Abstract

Web servers providing live coverage of events are hard to design due to a high degree of variation in the load, variations in geographical distribution of users and the frequency with which content is updated. In this paper, we propose domain caching, a technique that dynamically distributes the load on the server by instructing selected clients (domain caches) to cache server content and service requests from nearby clients. We evaluate domain caching using a trace-driven simulation study of the 1998 World Cup Soccer logs. Our simulations indicate that domain caching reduces the load on the server by as much as 38% while using a few hundred kilobytes of storage at the domain caches. We also found that the computational and storage overheads of domain caching are minimal.