Web Cache Appliance
Senior Project: 2000-2001
Eric Johnson, Brian Kreider, Melissa Orff, Shane Page and Erica Singer
Tricord Systems, Inc. develops server and storage appliances for the
ISP/ASP/SSP, applications and general file serving marketplaces. Tricord
products are based on its revolutionary storage management software, which
enables seamlessly scalable storage. Founded in 1987, Tricord is based in
Plymouth, MN, with facilities in Westminster, CO.
The project involved developing a web cache appliance that utilized current
Tricord products. A web cache sits between web servers (or origin servers) and
a client or many clients, and watches requests for HTML pages, images and files
(collectively known as objects), saving a copy for itself. Then, if there is
another request for the same object, it will use the copy that it has, instead
of asking the origin server for it again. There are three significant
advantages to web caching: reduced bandwidth consumption (fewer requests and
responses that need to go over the network), reduced server load (fewer
requests for a server to handle), and reduced latency (since responses for
cached requests are available immediately, and closer to the client being
served.)
In addition to the web cache application, a set of web-based administration
tools were developed. These tools provide a way for the system administrator to
configure various aspects of the web cache operations as well as to view
reports which indicate errors that occur in the hardware and software,
statistical information on the pages accessed, the number of times a web page
was accessed, the number of cache hits, and the number of cache misses.
The system was developed in Java, using JDBC and MySQL.
 Cache Options
Report Generation
Page Access Report
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