Patent ID: 6088718
Filing Date: 2000-07-11
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
In a system comprising:a client having a resource requester;a server having a storage area, containing stored resources, and a resource retriever for accessing the storage area and servicing requests for any of the stored resources; anda network connected between the client and the server and for facilitating communication therebetween;a method for pre-fetching resources comprising the steps of:(A) in the server, providing to the client from the server, in response to a fetch request, issued by the resource requester, for a particular resource, the particular resource and a list specifying both at least one resource and a corresponding probability measure associated therewith, the probability measure defining a measure of probability of the user transitioning from the particular resource to a corresponding resource specified in the list;(B) in the client computer, selecting, in response to the corresponding probability measures associated with all the resources in the list, a specific resource to be pre-fetched and issuing a pre-fetch request to the server for the specific resource; and(C) in the server;(C1) in response to the pre-fetch request, downloading the specific resource from the server to the client computer;(C2) forming the list from a plurality of resources then specified in usage logs stored in the server; and(C3) updating the usage logs in response to the fetch request but not in response to the pre-fetch request.