Improvements in or relating to long latency or error prone links

摘要

Described herein is a method for improving the performance of long latency or error prone links without reconfiguration. A host (10) is connected to an external network (20) by means of a satellite connection (30). A first router (40) and a first transparent cache (60) are associated with the host (10). Similarly, a second router (50) and a second transparent cache (70) are associated with the external network (20). When the host (10) sends a domain name server query, it is intercepted by the first router (40) and sent to the first transparent cache (60). If the first transparent cache (60) has the answer, it is passed back to the host (10) via the first router (40). If the first transparent cache (60) does not have the answer, the first router (40) passes the query to the second router (50) via the satellite (30) which passes it onto the second transparent cache (70) which supplies the answer if it has it. Otherwise, the router (50) passes the query to the external network (20). Once an answer has been found by the external network (20), it is passed back to the host (10) via the routers (40, 50) and the satellite (30) and is stored in the first transparent cache (60) for future use. <IMAGE>