Abstract: Methods, systems and carrier media are disclosed for near optimal bandwidth-constrained placement of data objects at a collection of distributed caches. The methods may determine placement of data objects based on probability of access requests to those objects, size of the objects, available bandwidth, time available to fill the caches, and/or cost of acquiring copies of the objects from an origin server. Additionally, the methods may account for data objects that already exist in one or more of the caches. The methods may be configured to determine a one-time placement and/or a substantially continuous placement of data objects. Additionally, the methods may be configured to account for variations between the data objects, caches and/or origin servers.