Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing – Network resource allocating
Reexamination Certificate
2002-04-24
2004-01-06
Etienne, Ario (Department: 2153)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
Network resource allocating
Reexamination Certificate
active
06675214
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information storage and retrieval and more particularly, to storage and accelerated retrieval of objects from an object storage device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a resource for tremendous amounts of content information. As examples, the content information can include text, images or other types of data. A user normally accesses the Internet using a connection provided by a modem and a regular telephone line or ISDN line, or by a T
1
line or leased line. The connection to the Internet may be indirectly through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or more directly to the Internet (or World Wide Web). The higher the bandwidth supported by the connection, the better the responsiveness of the Internet to the user's requests. For example, since a T
7
line offers substantially greater bandwidth than does a 28.8 kbps modem and regular telephone line, the connection to the Internet provided by the T
1
line will provide substantially faster responsiveness to a user's requests than would the 28.8 kbps modem.
A uniform resource locator (URL) is a unique identifier for a particular content location in the Internet. Every object located on the Internet has an associated URL. Each URL is divided up into four pieces, protocol, host name and port, uniform resource identifier (URI), and query. Furthermore, the content actually served from a particular URL location can depend on associated factors, such as cookies and authorizations which are sent between the requesting client and the content server using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is one of several Internet protocols for transporting data between client and servers. Other transport protocols include file transport protocols, gopher, file and WYSIWIG. An Internet host (e.g., content server) is an entity on the Internet which has either a domain name, an IP address or both, and which is capable of serving content to requesting clients. A URI is a particular location of data on the Internet host. A query is a text string passed from the client to the host which requests a particular piece of data from a particular URI location within the host. A valid URL request sent by a client must contain a protocol, a host and a URI. The query is optional.
Internet proxy servers have been used to allow multiple users to share Internet access through a common high speed connection. Examples of such Internet proxy servers are (1) WinGate available from Deerfield Communications Company and (2) Microsoft Proxy Server available from Microsoft Corporation. Shared connections facilitate providing firewalls to prevent unauthorized access into the user's (e.g., corporate) internal computers. These shared connections can also provide the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) caching to allow improved responsiveness. These Internet proxy servers can also provide site filtering to prevent user (behind the Internet proxy server) access to certain Internet sites.
HTTP caching operates to locally store frequently accessed Internet material so that it is quickly available when subsequently requested. HTTP caching is described in detail in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) document, version 1.1, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Such caching enables an organization to more efficiently share the bandwidth of the Internet connection.
Conventionally, the delivery over the Internet of similar data in different formats was achieved in several different ways. One way is to present the user with a low resolution version of an image but then allow the user to click on the image to request a higher resolution version. A second way is to allow for initially load-up a low resolution version of an image to the user while a higher resolution version loads in the background. A third approach is by content negotiation between content server and user so that a client can request a high or low resolution version from the content server at the same URL. The content negotiation can be achieved by communicating cookies and authorizations between the user and the content server or by a POST request to a dynamic URL located on the content server. A POST request is an HTTP mechanism that allows a browser to send data to a content server.
Content negotiation is known and described in the HTTP document, version 1.1. Content negotiation is the process in which a HTTP response to a HTTP request is chosen to be that which is most suitable, assuming of course that there is a choice. The content negotiation can be client-driven or server-driven. The content differences being negotiated can vary widely but are nevertheless stored on a content server on the Internet. As an example, the content differences could be different languages or different size images. In such a case, a client may negotiate on behalf of a user with a content server to receive smaller (e.g., less robust, lower quality, or smaller image area) images instead of commonly provided larger images from the server. If the content server can provide the smaller images, then the user is able to receive and display the information (e.g., images) faster than had their been no choice or no negotiation. Thus, in some cases, the negotiation facilitates improved bandwidth utilization and responsiveness of the Internet. One problem with the conventional approaches to negotiated content delivery over the Internet is that most content servers do not offer multiple versions of information content. As a result, content negotiation, even if available, is not supported by most content servers. There are also no standards on what types of versions or variations of information content a content server should make available. Consequently, content negotiation is difficult to obtain over the Internet.
One problem of all of these conventional approaches is that the content server is required to support and maintain both a high resolution and a low resolution version of an image or object. While both versions occupy the same logical location on the Internet (e.g., URL) the content server must allocate separate physical space for each version. Also, content providers must expend and utilize scarce resources to provide multiple versions of the same content.
Other problems are concerned with efficiently storing, using and managing the cache. Conventionally, a proxy server generally reserves or provides a single location in a cache for a single URL. In other words, images stored in the cache are identified only by URLs. However, such an approach ignores the fact that URLs are often modified by cookies or authorizations. See HTTP, version 1.1. This is a deficiency of the conventional approaches because cookies and authorizations impact the availability of images. Further, the storage of images within a cache for a proxy server has been conventionally done using a standard database (with either a relational database model or a hierarchical database model). The relational database model typically does not offer high-performance and developing a database system tends to require a lot of time and associated cost. In a hierarchical database model data is stored as nodes in a tree structure, and the edges of the tree are identified by particular keys which identify the location of the data within the database. The tree nodes store the data, and the tree edges which point to successive nodes facilitate retrieval of the data. While the hierarchical model is a faster model than the relational model, there is still sufficient overhead associated with the database engine being utilized. These problems associated with the conventional approaches are typically associated with the cost of the system and its performance.
Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for caching information content from a remote content server in a temporary storage device as well as for delivering information content from the temporary storage device to a user.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention pertains to techniques for storing objects (e.
Pronev Svilen B.
Starnes Darrell J.
Stewart Christopher H.
Etienne Ario
Hewlett--Packard Development Company, L.P.
Salad Abdullah E.
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