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.

Abstract: Techniques for storing objects (e.g., images) in and retrieving objects from a storage device (e.g., image store) in a rapid and efficient manner are disclosed. More particularly, the techniques include: storage of an object in and retrieval of an object from the storage device with reference to an object locator together with state and permission information, use of a directory structure of a file system to efficiently provide database structure for storage of the objects, storage and retrieval of object states as attributes of associated files in the file system, storage and retrieval of multiple versions of objects, and multi-threaded management of the storage device.