Local URL Rating Cache Pre-population for Web Filtering Response Time
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing URL filtering systems experience performance degradation due to the need for frequent rating requests to a remote server, especially on the first access to a webpage, as the local URL rating cache is initially empty and requires a remote rating before caching can occur.
Innovation Solution
Pre-populating a local URL rating cache with URLs and their ratings based on user attributes, using a database to identify analogous users and their URL access patterns, allowing the cache to service requests without initial remote queries and optimizing server load by pre-fetching ratings during low server load conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If the local URL rating cache is initialized empty and relies on remote server ratings, then the system can start with minimal data, but the response time for first-time URL access becomes slow and the server load increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by pre-populating the local URL rating cache with ratings for a set of URLs before the user actually needs them. This is achieved by receiving a set of URLs from the user's client device and proactively obtaining ratings for these URLs from the remote server in advance, so that when the user accesses these URLs, the ratings are already available in the local cache, eliminating the need for slow real-time remote queries.
2Reliability
If the system obtains ratings for every URL request, then the rating data is always up-to-date, but the communication bandwidth and processing load on the remote server increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system obtains ratings in advance for a predetermined set of URLs before the user needs to access them. This preliminary action allows the local cache to be pre-filled with rating data, so that subsequent URL requests can be served from the local cache without consuming network bandwidth or processing resources on the remote server.
Solution Approach 2:
The system serves itself by using the pre-obtained ratings from the remote server to immediately respond to user URL requests from the local cache. This self-service mechanism eliminates the need for continuous remote server communication, allowing the system to operate autonomously using locally stored rating data.
3Productivity
If the local URL rating cache is pre-populated with URLs from analogous users, then the cache hit rate increases for new users, but the system complexity for identifying analogous users and selecting URLs increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary mechanism that matches users with analogous user profiles to determine which pre-populated URLs should be loaded into a new user's local cache. This intermediary layer abstracts the complexity of user profiling and URL selection, allowing the system to automatically identify relevant URLs based on user characteristics without requiring complex real-time analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and apparatus for improving the system response time when URL filtering is employed to provide security for web access. The method involves gathering the attributes of the user, and pre-populating a local URL-rating cache with URLs and corresponding ratings associated with analogous attributes from a URL cache database. Thus, the cache hit rate is higher with a pre-populated local URL rating cache, and the system response time is also improved.