Systems and methods of maintaining freshness of a cached object based on demand and expiration time

• US 8,108,608 B2
• Filed: 01/28/2008
• Issued: 01/31/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Original Assignee: Citrix Application Networking LLC (Cloud Software Group)
• Inventors: Khemani, Prakash, Sundarrajan, Prabakar, Kumar, Lakshmi, Kailash, Kailash, Soni, Ajay, Sinha, Rajiv, Annamalaisami, Saravanakumar
• Primary Examiner(s): BRADLEY, MATTHEW A
• Application Number:
  US12/020,649
• Publication Number:
  US 20080222363A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,464 Days
• Field of Search: 711/118, 711/133
• US Class Current: 711/118
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0485 Networking architectures for enhanced packet encryption processing, e.g. offloading of IPsec packet processing or efficient security association look-up
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/166 at the transport layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/168 above the transport layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching

Abstract

A device that implements a method for performing integrated caching in a data communication network. The device is configured to receive a packet from a client over the data communication network, wherein the packet includes a request for an object. At the operating system/kernel level of the device, one or more of decryption processing of the packet, authentication and/or authorization of the client, and decompression of the request occurs prior to and integrated with caching operations. The caching operations include determining if the object resides within a cache, serving the request from the cache in response to a determination that the object is stored within the cache, and sending the request to a server in response to a determination that the object is not stored within the cache.

Claims

1. A method for an appliance to efficiently process a response comprising a non-cacheable object exceeding a predefined storage size of the object in a cache, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) receiving, by an appliance, an object having a size;

(b) detecting, by the appliance, the size of the object exceeds a predetermined size for storing objects in the cache;

(c) storing, by the appliance in response to the detection, a notation in the cache indicating the size of the object exceeds the predetermined size;

(d) receiving, by the appliance, a first request from a client for the object from a server;

(e) determining, by the appliance, the object of the first request corresponds to the notation in the cache; and

(f) transmitting, by the appliance in response to the determination, the first request to the server.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving, by the appliance, from the server a response to the first request comprising the object, and bypassing, by the appliance, storing the object in the cache.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein step (c) comprises storing, by the appliance, the notation in a data structure in the cache.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein step (c) comprises caching, by the appliance, the notation using the expiry information for the object.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising using, by the appliance, an expiry of the object as the expiry of the notation stored in the cache.

6. The method of claim 5, comprising removing, by the appliance, the notation in the cache upon expiration of the expiry.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising bypassing, by the appliance, the cache transparently to one of the client or a user of the client.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein step (a) comprises detecting, by the appliance, the size of the object from a response to the client from the server.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the predefined size comprises a maximum size of the object that can be stored in the cache.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving, by the appliance, the object from the server in response to a second request from the client, detecting the size of the object does not exceed the predefined size, and storing the object in the cache.

11. A system to efficiently process a response comprising a non-cacheable object exceeding a predefined storage size of the object in a cache, the system comprising:

means for receiving, by an appliance, an object having a size;

means for detecting, by the appliance, the size of the object exceeds a predefined size for storing objects in the cache;

means for storing, by the appliance in response to the detection, a notation in the cache indicating the size of the object exceeds the predefined size;

means for receiving, by the appliance, a first request from a client for the object from a server;

means for determining, by the appliance, the object of the first request corresponds to the notation in the cache; and

means for transmitting, by the appliance in response to the determination, the first request to the server.

12. The system of claim 11, comprising means for receiving, by the appliance, from the server a response to the first request comprising the object, and bypassing, by the appliance, storing the object in the cache.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the appliance stores the notation in a data structure in the cache.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein an expiry of the notation comprises the expiry of the corresponding object.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the appliance caches the notation using the expiry information for the object.

16. The system of claim 14, comprising means for removing, by the appliance, the notation in the cache upon expiration of the expiry.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the appliance bypasses the cache transparently to one of the client or a user of the client.

18. The system of claim 11, comprising means for detecting, by the appliance, the size of the object from a response to the client from the server.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein the predefined size comprises a maximum size of the object that can be stored in the cache.

20. The system of claim 11, comprising means for receiving, by the appliance, the object from the server in response to a second request from the client, detecting the size of the object does not exceed the predefined size, and storing the object in the cache.