Web Caching

Opcodes

This section describes the nine opcodes defined by RFC 2186. Some experimental opcodes are discussed in Section B.4. The numeric (decimal) code appears in parentheses following the opcode name.

ICP_OP_QUERY (1)

A query message that asks a neighbor cache if it has the object with the URL given in the payload. A cache that receives a QUERY must respond with one of the following reply opcodes: ICP_OP_HIT, ICP_OP_MISS, ICP_OP_ERR, ICP_OP_MISS_NOFETCH, ICP_OP_DENIED, or ICP_OP_HIT_OBJ.

The payload of a QUERY message is shown in Figure B-2. The Requester Host Address is an artifact from the protocol’s very early design and remains only for backwards compatibility. Originally, it was meant to hold the IPv4 address of the client that initiated the (HTTP) request. Note that this is different from the Sender Host Address. Instead, it is the address of the sender’s client. Apparently, this field was meant to be used for analyzing the flow of requests through a hierarchy. In practice, it is always filled with 0’s. The variable-sized URL field should be terminated with a null byte.

Figure B-2. ICP QUERY payload

ICP_OP_SECHO (10)

SECHO is short for Source Echo. This opcode is used for ICP queries sent to the UDP echo service (port 7) of origin servers. If enabled, the origin server simply sends the unchanged packet right back to the cache. Thus, ICP_OP_SECHO is also an ICP reply opcode. The ...