Patent ID: 7451225

Claim:
A method for use in a computer system comprising a core and at least one edge device, the core comprising at least one object addressable storage system that stores a plurality of content units thereon and provides an object addressable interface that enables content units to be accessed via object identifiers, the at least one edge device being configured to access at least some of the plurality of content units, the method comprising acts of: (A) configuring at least one cache to be disposed logically between the core and the at least one edge device and to temporarily store a subset of the plurality of content units; and (B) configuring the computer system to have a prefetch policy that selects, from among the plurality of content units, at least one selected content unit to be prefetched to the at least one cache, the prefetch policy evaluating at least some of the plurality of content units as candidates for prefetching based upon at least one prefetch criterion that is selected from the group consisting of; an identity of a source that wrote an evaluated content unit to the computer system; a size of an evaluated content unit; a content type of an evaluated content unit; when the prefetch is performed subsequent to a request to access at least one of the plurality of content units stored on the core, an identity of a requester that issued the request; when the prefetch is performed subsequent to a request to access at least one of the plurality of content units stored to the computer system at a first time, proximity of a time at which an evaluated content unit was stored to the computer system relative to the first time; and when metadata was written to the computer system along with the evaluated content unit, the substance of the metadata.