Patent ID: 7802065

Claim:
A method for managing a distributed cache, the method comprising: providing, in a local computing device, a local cache that is part of a distributed cache; requesting, by the local computing device, remote cache information for a file from at least one peer; receiving, by the local computing device, the remote cache information from the at least one peer, wherein the remote cache information comprises a message that indicates whether the at least one peer includes the file; determining a priority of the file in the local cache based on the remote cache information, wherein the priority of the file in the local cache is determined based on the number of peers that include the file in a remote cache, wherein the determined priority of the file is selected from a range of priority levels comprising of at least a first priority level, a second priority level and a third priority level, wherein at least one of the priority levels prevents the file from being deleted from the local cache; and beginning a local cache reduction operation that uses the priority to determine whether the file is deleted.