Abstract: Systems and methods are described that improve the efficiency of byte caching mechanisms when transmitting or receiving structured data. Some of these techniques may normalize the structured data before transmission over the network. Other techniques may use templates or semantic differences.

Abstract: Described is a technology by which a web proxy server evaluates its cached objects, and when an object is invalid, performs a freshness check on that object, independent of any client requests. As a result, the cache contains objects that have a greater likelihood of being fresh when requested by a client. By scanning a web cache data structure to determine whether corresponding cached content is still valid, and sending a freshness check to a web server when the content is not valid, the cache is kept up to date. The scanning may be periodic or based upon some other triggering event, and all of the cache's corresponding entries may be scanned, or some smaller subset of the entries. In one example implementation, a web proxy server that contains the cache includes a freshness check mechanism that scans and keeps the cached objects up to date.

Abstract: Described is a technology by which high latency problems with respect to web requests are reduced by having a web proxy server predict and pre-fetch content, in parallel, that is to be requested by a client. The web proxy analyzes a main web page requested by a client to predict subsequent client requests. The web proxy prep fetches content before the client requests it, by making concurrent requests for the page's embedded objects that exceed the client's limited number of (e.g., two) connections. In one example, the web proxy sends HTTP requests substantially in parallel to a web server, thereby reducing overall latency. In another example, the web proxy server sends parallel requests to a remote web proxy coupled to a web server. The remote web proxy requests only a limited number of objects (e.g., two) at a time, but does so over fast (low latency) connections to the web server.

Abstract: Described is a technology by which a web proxy server forwards a client request for content to a web server over an unauthenticated connection, including when the client already has an authenticated connection to that web server. If the web content is not received because of a need for authentication, the content is re-requested over the client's authenticated connection, or if one does not yet exist, returns the response to the client to complete the authentication process to establish an authenticated connection. A learning mechanism (e.g., that persists known private URLs) may be coupled to the selection mechanism to maintain references to objects that are private, and thereby avoid redundant retrieval attempts for known private objects over unauthenticated connections.