Patent ID: 7426547

Claim:
A method of operating an intranet server that handles the requests of one or more downstream intranet servers or users for resources that are served by one or more web servers via an internet to said intranet server, said method comprising: (a) updating a usage count for each request from said users for a first resource; (b) obtaining said first resource from one of said web servers that is capable of serving said first resource; (c) maintaining said first resource in a local memory of said intranet server only if said usage count for the requests is equal to or greater than a threshold count value of three; (d) wherein the step of maintaining said first resource in a local memory of said intranet server includes the step of responding to the usage count being equal to or greater than the threshold count value to effectuate the maintenance of said first resource in the local memory; (e) further including the step of serving said first resource to one of said downstream intranet servers or users that is currently requesting said first resource; (f) maintaining an expiry value for said first resource, and (g) removing said first resource from said local memory when a time-out period has elapsed for said expiry value without receiving a request for said first resource.