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What Is Transparent Caching?

Caching is a simple concept: store the most popular Internet content and deliver it from the operator’s network, rather than always retrieving it from the remote source. The operator benefits through reduced bandwidth consumption, and the content owner and subscriber benefit through better quality of delivery.

Transparent caching diagram
With transparent caching, content is stored and served from the edge of the operator’s network, saving core and IP transit network resources and accelerating delivery to the subscriber.

While caching is simple in concept, it must be performed in a way that ensures the integrity of services, content and the network. Transparent caching refers to caching that:
  • Always delivers fresh content
  • Preserves end-to-end application logic, ensuring full functionality in areas such as user authorization, geo-control and device-specific content.
  • Enables full compliance with copyright legislation, such as the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the EU E-Commerce Directive 2000.
  • Introduces no additional access point that could pose a security breach for the operator’s network
  • Is invisible to both the content originator and the end user

How UltraBand Transparent Caching Works

PeerApp’s patented object caching approach has been designed from the ground up for completely transparent operation because it always preserves end-to-end application logic. UltraBand integrates to the network via a router or DPI switch and inspects all of the traffic that is directed to it. The diagram below provides a step-by-step illustration of the caching operation.

transparent caching steps diagram
  1. Subscriber requests object; subscriber and content source establish session.
  2. UltraBand inspects request and passes to content source.
  3. Source executes content delivery logic (authorization, content adaptation, reporting, etc.) and starts delivering requested object.
  4. UltraBand inspects response header and payload.
  5. If object is in cache, UltraBand instructs source to stop serving and serves it from cache in same session.
  6. If object is not in cache, UltraBand continues to deliver it from source, while storing a copy for future use.
Because UltraBand always waits for the originating server to confirm delivery, it simply will not deliver an object that the service itself would not deliver, even if the requested object has been previously stored in the cache. For example, a content that was posted to a video-sharing service and subsequently removed for copyright infringement will not be served by UltraBand because UltraBand will “see” that the service no longer delivers that particular object.

Unlike traditional proxy cache methods, UltraBand does not rely on URLs to identify content. It can work equally with static or dynamic URL schemes. Unlike “out of band” approaches, UltraBand does not attempt to reverse-engineer application logic or guess how the originating content server would behave.

This transparent behavior has operational benefits as well. There is never a need to manually purge objects from the cache because they are stale or infringing. UltraBand simply cannot serve them. Also, because UltraBand identifies objects rather than originating URLs, it is unaffected by dynamic URL schemes and there is no need to maintain or update URL tables for individual content services.

Learn More

For more information or a free analysis to determine the impact of caching in your network, please contact us today.
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