A user-access model-driven approach to proxy cache performance analysis

World-Wide Web usage has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. This growth has resulted in a significant increase in network and server loads that have adversely affected user response times. Among many viable and available approaches to reducing user response time. Web caching has received considerable attention. The purpose of this paper is to present an empirically derived model of Internet user-access activity, and to demonstrate its usefulness for conducting model-driven discrete simulation studies of cache performance analysis. The user-access model is shown to be a reasonable representation of Internet activity, and the user-access approach to cache performance analysis is shown to be a favorable alternative to trace-driven simulation. A report on the accuracy of the model and a summary of the findings are presented.