Web Caching and Replication

14.3. Content-Aware Request Distribution

All request redirection mechanisms discussed so far share one property: they are oblivious to what objects are requested. Consequently, a request for any object on a given Web site may be sent to any server, and every server must be able to fulfill any request. However, there can be multiple reasons to perform request redirection differently for different objects. One reason we discussed in Section 14.2: to support partially replicated Web sites. While the tricks described in that section accommodate partial replication, content-specific request redirection supports it directly: a request is directed only to a server that has a copy of the requested object. Other reasons for content-aware request distribution ...