Accelerated content delivery over a network using reduced size objects

• US 6,578,073 B1
• Filed: 08/12/1998
• Issued: 06/10/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/13/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Palo Alto Networks Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Stewart, Christoher H., Pronev, Svilen B., Starnes, Darrell J., Gabler, Jeffrey R., Giap, Steven C., Kothari, Rupali M., Elwahab, Amgad M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Chin, Wellington
• Assistant Examiner(s): HO, CHUONG T
• Application Number:
  US09/133,791
• Time in Patent Office: 1,763 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/219, 709/203, 709/228, 709/229, 709/246, 713/201, 345/473
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 9/00 Image coding bandwidth or redundancy reduction for static pictures H04N1/41; coding or decoding of static colour picture signals H04N1/64; methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals H04N19/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/1423 the instrument generating sequences of position coordinates corresponding to handwriting preprocessing or recognising digital ink G06V30/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5651 Reducing the amount or size of exchanged application data

Abstract

Improved techniques for rapid and efficient delivery of objects from a network (e.g., the Internet) to users are disclosed. The improved techniques can be utilized in a variety of apparatuses, including a proxy system or an acceleration apparatus. Such a proxy system operates to produce an accelerated version of content information from the network, cache the accelerated version (and possibly original versions) for subsequent requests for the same information content, and supply the accelerated version of the information content to a requesting user.

Claims

1. A proxy system for accelerated content delivery over a network comprising:

a proxy server including a proxy filter and a proxy cache, the proxy filter monitoring requests for data that are received from network browsers and the proxy cache storing previously requested and non-accelerated content data;

an acceleration server that receives data requests from the proxy filter that the proxy filter believes can be accelerated by the acceleration server, the acceleration server including an accelerator, an image store, and an image manager for managing the network browser requests for data, the acceleration server storing accelerated data requests in the image store for responding to previously requested accelerated data requests without accessing the accelerator; and

wherein the proxy server provides the data requested by the network browsers to the network browsers without repeating acceleration processing.

2. The proxy system for accelerated content delivery over a network of claim 1 where the data is image data.

3. A proxy system for accelerating content delivery over a network comprising:

an acceleration server;

a proxy server coupled to the acceleration server that includes a proxy filter and a proxy cache, the proxy cache for storing previously requested and non-accelerated content data, the proxy filter for supplying data requests to the acceleration server that may be accelerated;

the acceleration server including an accelerator, an image manager, and an image store, the acceleration server accelerating the received data requests that are not found in the image store and then storing such requests in the image store for future access.

4. The proxy system for accelerating content delivery over a network of claim 3 where the data is image data.