Patent ID: 6292835
Filing Date: 2001-09-18
Classification: G06F,H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
In a network comprising a plurality of servers which are each a source of data, a plurality of clients which each request data maintained in said servers, and a proxy which caches data received from said servers, a method for determining when to update data cached by said proxy, said method comprising the steps of:receiving an indication of available network bandwidth between said plurality of servers and said proxy for performing updates of said data cached by said proxy;receiving an indication of frequency with which at least one of said plurality of servers are updated;maintaining a number of channels subscribed to by said clients and a channel size of each of the channels;maintaining client request data, including a number of client requests for each of the channels;deriving, from said indication of frequency and said client request data, obsolescence numbers associated with each channel, each of the obsolescence numbers reflecting the number of client requests for each channel that have received outdated data and reflecting how current said outdated data is; anddynamically calculating when to update said data cached by said proxy based upon said indication of available network bandwidth and said obsolescence numbers.