Reports

Detection and Exploitation of File Working Sets

Tait, Carl D.; Duchamp, Dan

The work habits of most individuals yield file access patterns that are quite pronounced and can be regarded as defining working sets of files used for particular applications. This paper describes a client-side cache management technique for detecting these patterns and then exploiting them to successfully prefetch files from servers. Trace-driven simulations show the technique substantially increases the hit rate of a client file cache in an environment in which a client workstation is dedicated to a single user. Successful file prefetching carries three major advantages: (1) applications run faster, (2) there is less “˜“˜burst‘‘ load placed on the network, and (3) properly-loaded client caches can better survive network outages. Our technique requires little extra code, and — because it is simply an augmentation of the standard LRU client cache management algorithm — is easily incorporated into existing software.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Computer Science
Publisher
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University
Series
Columbia University Computer Science Technical Reports, CUCS-050-90
Published Here
March 8, 2012