Patent ID: 7054917

Claim:
In a communications network, a method for accelerating delivery of data comprising: a) receiving a request for data from a client's Web browser at client network software associated with a first cache containing data sent to the client, said request directed to a data source in the communications network, wherein the data source is a content provider, a content provider proxy, or a network hub intermediating between the first proxy and the con-tent provider, the hub having a second cache containing data transmitted from the content provider through the hub; b) determining whether content corresponding to the requested URL is already in the first cache and, if so i) returning the content to the client's browser; otherwise ii) determining whether the requested URL matches a pattern of other URLs in the first cache and, if so A) returning content corresponding to a pattern-matching URL to the client's browser; otherwise B) requesting the data from the data source, said request sent from the client network software; C) receiving requested data from the data source at the client network software; D) determining whether a URL corresponding to the requested data matches a pattern of other URLs stored in the first cache and determining whether the URL which matches the pattern of other URLs stored in the first cache has an expiration time which less than a predetermined period of expiration time, said determination of expiration time performed prior to returning the requested data to the client's browser; and E) returning the requested data to the client's browser if the corresponding URL does not match the pattern of other URLs stored in the first cache, otherwise adding the content corresponding to the URL to the first cache before returning the requested data to the client's browser.