Improving Internet archive service through proxy cache

Abstract

Traditionally, file transfer protocol (FTP) servers are major archive providers and users apply the Archie server to locate FTP archives. With the extreme popularity of the WWW, Web servers are now important archive providers and users download archives via HTTP. To reduce HTTP traffic, proxy cache servers are deployed on the Internet. However, we find the hit rate of archives in cache servers is quite low. This study proposes a combination of caching and better searching mechanisms to alleviate the problem. We enable a proxy server to automatically collect WWW and FTP archives from its cache, organize them in the form of an FTP directory, and then offer the directory list to the Archie. Accordingly, users can find archives on WWW and FTP servers through the Archie, and they can directly download archives from the proxy server, thus improving the reuse of cached archives. A system was implemented and operated in a real environment to evaluate the approach and results are discussed.