Scalable cache

Abstract

Requests for objects are received from one or more clients in a system comprised of a plurality of nodes. One of the requests is sent from one of the clients. The request is received from a first node of said plurality of nodes by a second node of said plurality of nodes. A requested object is returned from the second node of the plurality of nodes using one of a plurality of protocols. The method may be applied to a scalable and highly available cache array. The cache array may enhance the performance and throughput of Web servers connected to a network such as the Internet. A network dispatcher may send requests to a cache node of a cache array. The cache node selected by the network dispatcher may either serve the request, handoff the request to another cache node of a cache array, or communicate via one of a variety of protocols with another cache node of the cache array to cooperatively serve the request. A network dispatcher, operating in a special mode, may also function as a content based router. Thus, it is also possible for a network dispatcher to route requests using a combination of content-based and non-content-based routing in order to further improve system performance.