Transparent distributed Web caching

Layer 5 switching-based transparent Web caching intercepts HTTP requests and redirects requests according to their contents. This technique makes the deployment and configuration of a caching system easier and improves its performance by ensuring that non-cacheable HTTP requests bypass the cache servers. We propose a Load Balancing Layer 5 switching-based (LB-L5) Web caching scheme that uses the Layer 5 switching-based technique to support distributed Web caching. We present simulation results that show that LB-L5 outperforms existing Web caching schemes, namely ICP, Cache Digest, and basic L5 transparent Web caching, in terms of cache server workload balancing and response time. LB-L5 is also shown to be more adaptable to high HTTP request intensity than the other schemes.