Appeal 2007-0663
Application 09/825,661
A. INVENTION
The invention at issue on appeal retrieves data via a network. Users
of the Internet and other networks sometimes suffer undesirably long
"latency," i.e., the time it takes to deliver requested data. For a user of a
Web browser, for example, such latency may require the user to wait
seconds or minutes while the requested text, images, audio, or applications
are loaded. (Specification 1.)
The Appellant's invention seeks to reduce latency via collaboration
between a client, a cache, and a HyperText Transfer Protocol ("HTTP")
server. For example, the client sends a request for the data object stored at
the uniform resource locator ("URL") "http://example.com/ x.gif" to the
cache. If the cache finds no entry for the URL, it forwards the request to the
HTTP server at example.com. The server processes the request and returns
a response with a header having the following fields:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Digest: md5=HUXZLQLMuI/KZ5KDcJPcOA==
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 02:00:04 GMT
Content-type: image/gif .
In particular, the "Digest" header indicates that the MD5 digest of the
response data equals "HUXZLQLMu//KZ5KDcJPcOA==." After receiving
the header, the cache parses the fields thereof, extracts the digest, and
searches a digest index to determine if any currently cached data object has a
matching MD5 digest. If no such data object is cached, the cache retrieves
the rest of the response. If such a data object is cached, however, the cache
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