HIERARCHICAL CACHING IN TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS

摘要

The invention addresses the field of mobile communications. It relates to a method, network node and computer program for management of cached information within a hierarchical structure. The basic approach is to provide an intelligent mechanism for more dynamic management of the cached contents. In particular it provides a solution for a more efficient utilisation of the storage resources in a caching architecture by caching a single cached copy of the same content on each path from a client to the original source in the hierarchical architecture. This basically means that the cached information is placed as high up the hierarchy as necessary, but that the mechanism is enhanced with the capability to also move the cached information down the hierarchy in case the content is mainly used on a regular base by hosts connected to a part of the hierarchical architecture. The dynamics of the proposed solution foresees also to replicate a cached content to more then one part of the hierarchical architecture.