Web proxy caching provides an effective way to reduce access latency and ba
ndwidth consumption, and thus improve performance of the World Wide Web. Du
e to the simplicity of incorporating various types of data into the Web, no
n-negligible access for large multimedia data is observed. Large multimedia
data transfer, requiring a long-lived connection with consecutive data tra
nsmissions, often fails over wide area networks. Repetitive attempts to fet
ch large objects through proxy caches would waste network resources with no
success guaranteed. In this paper, we propose on-demand cumulative prefetc
hing to enhance proxy caches for better data availability of large multimed
ia files. Our analysis shows that on-demand cumulative prefetching can be p
erformed within a few trials with minimal additional bandwidth requirement.
The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme substantiall
y reduces error rate and increases byte hit rate for large multimedia data.
(C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.