Importance

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Abstract

A content delivery services provider is disclosed for directing the at least one proxy server to pre-fetch content from the at least one content provider original site using an optimum pre-fetch bandwidth allocation value. The content delivery services provider is part of a system for storing and delivering content, which includes a plurality of end user browsers for requesting content, at least one content provider original site for delivering the content, and at least one proxy server for storing the content. These elements are coupled over a network for communicating with each other. The content delivery services provider programmed for: (1) modeling a retrieval time of content o of size size(o) using b units of bandwidth as ret(o)=congestion.times.size(o).times.d(b), wherein d(b) is a unit delay observed when b units of bandwidth is used for pre-fetching the content, and congestion(Util) can be represented as ##EQU1## or congestion(Util)=.beta..times.(1.0-Util).sup..alpha. +.phi.; (2) modeling an amount of delay observed by the at least one proxy server for the content fetched from the at least one content provider original site at time t.sub.0 as ##EQU2## wherein P is a pre-fetch bandwidth size, B is a total bandwidth available to the system, r(t)=(1-.sigma.(P)).times.u(t) is an amount of bandwidth the system uses for retrieving end user browser requests for content that is not stored in the at least one proxy server, .sigma.(P) is a cache freshness and availability value given a bandwidth P, and u(t) is a user access rate; (3) calculating the optimum pre-fetch bandwidth allocation value P by solving ##EQU3## and (4) communicating the optimum pre-fetch bandwidth allocation value P to the at least one proxy server.

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First Claim