Domain Caching: Building Web Services for Live Events

Web servers providing live coverage of events are hard to design due to a high degree of variation in the load, variation in geographical distribution of users and the frequency with which content is updated. In this paper, we propose domain caching, a technique that dynamically distributes the load on the server by instructing selected clients (domain caches) to cache server content and service requests from nearby clients. We evaluate domain caching using a trace driven simulation study of the 1998 World Cup Soccer logs. Our simulations indicate that domain caching reduces load on the server by as much as 38% while using a few hundred kilobytes of storage at domain caches. We also found that the computational and storage overheads of domain caching are minimal.