Patent ID: 8176141

Claim:
A method for implementing simple message block (SMB) request prefetching, the method comprising: monitoring, at an optimizer node of a communications system, network traffic to identify an SMB request, the network traffic comprising communications from a user system on a client side of the communications system to an addressable content location on a server side of the communications system, the optimizer node being disposed in the communications system between the user system and the content location; and when a first SMB request is identified: analyzing the first SMB request to determine an associated request memory offset indicating a memory offset within a file affected by the first SMB request; determining whether the request memory offset matches one of a set of known memory offsets maintained by the optimizer node, each of the set of known memory offsets being associated with at least one additional memory offset previously determined as likely to be associated with a second SMB request requested by the user system within a first time threshold subsequent to the first SMB request; determine whether the first SMB request is an SMB locking request or an SMB unlocking request; and when the request memory offset matches one of the set of known memory offsets maintained by the optimizer node, prefetching an SMB locking request and an SMB unlocking request, both associated with the at least one additional memory offset; wherein the prefetching step occurs only when the first SMB request is an SMB locking request.