Patent ID: 8396936

Claim:
A method executed by a computer system, comprising: receiving, at a server and from client computers, information that identifies which chunks are stored in local caches at the client computers; receiving, at the server and from a first one of the client computers, a request to evict a chunk from a local cache of the first one of the client computers; determining, by the server, whether the chunk stored at the local cache of the first one of the client computers is a globally oldest chunk, wherein the globally oldest chunk is older than all of the chunks stored in the local caches at the client computers; authorizing, by the server, the first one of the client computers to evict the chunk when the chunk is the globally oldest chunk; and instructing the first one of the client computers, when no other client computer has the chunk requested, to send a timestamp of the chunk and the chunk to another client computer when the another client computer has a chunk with the oldest timestamp among the chunks stored in the local caches at the client computers.