Dynamic and distributed Web caching in active networks

Web caching or web proxy has been considered as the prime vehicle of coping with the ever-increasing demand for information retrieval over,vide-area networks, WWW being a typical example. Existing work on web caching has primarily focused on content based caching; relatively less attention has been given to the development of proper placement strategies for the potential web proxies in the network. In this paper, we address the issue of caching a target web server in multiple sites throughout the network. The objective is to reduce the overall latency of searching the target web server subject to network resources and traffic pattern. Specifically, we consider the general client/server model in the content of the active network, in which router or switch is capable of processing request/reply packets. The proposed caching mechanism is simple and distributed can be adaptive to the changing traffic. In addition, we carry out a comparative study with an optimal placement policy. The results obtained indicate that the proposed caching mechanism can significantly reduce the network traffic as well as the overall searching latency