Patent ID: 7228350

Claim:
An arrangement for serving information requests, comprising: a plurality of information servers connected to a communications network, all of the information servers having a common address on the communications network and serving a set of information to clients, each of the information servers being configured to receive a transaction request associated with an individual transaction and to provide a response to each transaction request; and a content director connecting the information servers to the communications network and distributing transaction requests among the information servers comprising: a flow switch that selects an appropriate information server to service each transaction request and thereafter forwards at least portions of the transaction request to a selected one of the information servers; a cache processor that accesses a cache; the cache that stores, in a hot locator table identifying information frequently requested from the information servers and including, for each locator identifying corresponding information, a hit counter indicating a number of direct transaction requests, received by the plurality of servers over a determined time interval, requesting the corresponding information; a digest generator that generates, when the hit counter for a locator indicates at least a threshold transaction request receipt frequency but not when the hit counter fails to indicate at least a threshold transaction receipt frequency, a digest value pointing to the location in the hot locator table where the corresponding entry is stored; and a digest store that stores the digests corresponding to frequently requested content.