Systems and methods for switching from a first Internet context to a
second Internet context without process shutdown are described. Internet
context data, such as cookies, history and user-defined data, is stored
in containers unique to each user on a system. Internet content is stored
in a common location so redundant downloaded information is not stored.
Content information is found or stored by hashing a URL and indexing the
memory location according to the resulting hash value. If content data is
specific to a particular user, a hash is performed on a combination of
the URL and an ordinal associated with the user's unique identity to
obtain a hash value unique to the user. The user-specific content is then
stored and the memory location is indexed according to the unique hash
value.