Distributed HTTP cache

The Internet is growing rapidly and today most of the traffic is HTTP based. To allow more users to share the resources available, unnecessary traffic must be avoided. One way to achieve this is to use a caching scheme. This thesis will examine different methods to extend caching. Several methods have been simulated to establish their difference in behavior. The results indicate that the method of sending requests to all neighbors is as good as keeping a summary of neighbor caches. The method with a hierarchical cache can perform as well as the others. The conclusion is that hierarchical cache is a good concept to start with, because it is easy to introduce in a network. If there are many caches that will cooperate, using either a request sending protocol or a summary protocol renders the best result.Validerat; 20101217 (root