Network Caching Technologies Although the volume of Web traffic
on the Internet is staggering, a large percentage of that
traffic is redundant-multiple users at any given site request
much of the same content. This means that a significant
percentage of the WAN infrastructure carries the identical
content (and identical requests for it) day after day.
Eliminating a significant amount of recurring telecommunications
charges offers an enormous savings opportunity for enterprise
and service provider customers. Web caching performs the local
storage of Web content to serve these redundant user requests
more quickly, without sending the requests and the resulting
content over the WAN. Network caching is the technique of
keeping frequently accessed information in a location close to
the requester. A Web cache stores Web pages and content on a
storage device that is physically or logically closer to the
user-closer and faster than a Web lookup. By reducing the amount
of traffic on WAN links and on overburdened Web s