Chapter 12. Prefetching

Prefetching refers to performing work in anticipation of future needs. The idea of prefetching Web pages has surely occurred to many as they used their browsers. It often takes too long to load and display a requested object; by the same token, several seconds usually elapse between consecutive requests by the same user. It is natural to wonder if the time between two requests could be used to anticipate and prefetch the second Web object so that it could be displayed with little or no delay.

Despite such obvious motivation, prefetching remains largely a research topic, and the few commercial products use approaches that seem primitive compared to concepts discussed in the research literature. The main reason for this ...

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