The present invention is directed to a proxy cache preloader. According to an
embodiment of the present invention, a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client
intermediary having a proxy cache is used to provide multiple client computing
devices with access to Internet data in the cache. When a device needs access to
Internet data (i.e., a web page), a preloader/refresh mechanism is employed which
uses a preloader algorithm. In one embodiment, the preloader algorithm checks to
see if the current request is for an HTTP Uniform Resource Locator (URL). If not,
the data is re-loaded into the proxy cache. If the current request is a request
for HTTP, the preloader mechanism determines if optimization is enabled for the
URL. If not, the data is re-loaded into the proxy cache. Otherwise, an information
retrieval method (e.g., an HTTP GET) optimization algorithm is employed.
