in a preferred implementation the prefetch queue is completely or partially flushed at step 208 when the prefetch prediction engine determines that all or some of the queued prefetches are not likely to be useful for example such a flushing of the prefetch queue may be performed when an application in the client computer issues a request for an object that is not in the local cache is not in the process of being demand fetched and is not in the prefetch queue if these conditions are satisfied i e a miss occurs then the entity e g the prefetch prediction engine 122 that re evaluates the prefetch queue e g at step 208 fig5 may decide that some or all of the pending prefetch entries correspond to a u201c path u201d that the client is unlikely to follow and that therefore these entries should be deleted on the other hand despite the miss the prefetch prediction engine may nevertheless continue to predict that some of the items in the prefetch queue will be required in the future in which case those items are not flushed from the prefetch queue the items remaining in the prefetch queue are prefetched when the client computer system is able to schedule those items to be fetched after the current candidate has been processed and a decision has been made with regard to that candidate the prefetch candidate filtering process resumes at step.