Patent ID: 8091124

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method comprising: receiving at a web proxy server a request from a client for web content, in which the client has an existing authenticated connection to a web server that serves the content; selecting to use an unauthenticated connection instead of the existing authenticated connection to determine whether the web content is private or public; forwarding the request to the web server over the unauthenticated connection, and 1) if the web content is received in response to the request, determining that the web content is public, caching the content and returning the content to the client, or 2) if the requested content is not received because of a need for authentication, determining that the web content is private, re-requesting the web content over the existing authenticated connection, receiving the web content via the existing authenticated connection, and returning the content to the client without storing the content in a cache local to the web proxy, content stored in the cache local to the web proxy available for subsequent client requests.