Patent ID: 6330606
Filing Date: 2001-12-11
Classification: G06F,H04L,H04M,H04N

Abstract:
In a networked computer system such as the Internet that includes a plurality of remote servers, a plurality of proxy servers and a plurality of client systems, all of which are logically interconnected so that the client systems can access informational content stored at the one or more remote servers, and wherein at least one of the client systems is comprised of an electronics unit which provides a graphical user interface by which the Internet can be accessed and browsed using a conventional television set as a display, a method of efficiently allocating cache space within the plurality of proxy servers so that requested content from one or more Web pages is distributively cached at mutually exclusive proxy servers, comprising steps for:dividing responsibility for obtaining and caching content among a plurality of proxy servers, wherein at least two proxy servers are responsible for obtaining and caching mutually exclusive content;receiving a request for downloading content from a particular Web page identified by a uniform resource locator (""URL"");rather than allowing any arbitrary proxy server to obtain and cache the requested content from the particular Web page identified, mapping the URL of the particular Web page to a particular one and only one of a plurality of mutually exclusive ranges of URLs that are distributed among the plurality of proxy servers; andat a proxy server assigned the particular mutually exclusive range to which the URL of the particular Web page is mapped, searching for the requested content in a local cache, and if the requested content is found in the local cache, returning it to the client system from which the request was received, and if the requested content is not found, then obtaining the requested content from one of the remote servers and storing it in the local cache, and returning the requested content to the client system from which the request was received.