Scalable Federation of Web Cache Servers

Web caches are traditionally organised in a simple tree like hierarchy. In this paper, a new architecture is proposed, where federations of caches are distributed globally, caching data partially. The advantages of the proposed system are that contention on global caches is reduced, while at the same time improving the scalability of the system since extra cache resources can be added on the fly. Among other topics discussed in this papers, is the scalability of the proposed system, the algorithms used to control the federation of Web caches and the approach used to identify the potential Web cache partners. In order to obtain a successful collaborative Web caching system, the formation of federations must be controlled by an algorithm that takes the dynamics of the Internet traffic into consideration. We use the history of Web cache access in order to determine how federations should be formed. Initial performance results of a simulation of a number of nodes are promising.