Title:
Websnatcher: Customized WWW Prefetching
Websnatcher: Customized WWW Prefetching
Author(s)
Gullickson, Maria L.
Chervenak, Ann L.
Chervenak, Ann L.
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
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Abstract
This document describes WebSnatcher, an application that prefetches Web
pages and stores them on a local file system based on a user profile. Users
can specify explicit URLs, the location of a bookmarks file, and areas of
interest for searching. Along with areas for searching, users may select
one or more of the supported search engines to use in making queries. Users
can also specify how deeply it follows hyperlinks within the page. A perl
script is included to allow users to run WebSnatcher automatically at
periodic intervals. WebSnatcher automatically cleans up old data when
retrieving new pages and creates an index to help users navigate new data.
Users may optionally archive old data for future use.
Files are retrieved by requests sent to a server's HTTP port. For searches,
a request is sent to the search engine's server, WebSnatcher parses the
results to find matching pages, and then it retrieves these pages. Along
with the main HTML file, WebSnatcher retrieves any images and frames
contained within the file.
We have planned several improvements for WebSnatcher, including a more
robust and user-friendly interface to the profile. We also discussed
incorporating an Anycasting scheme to allow users to specify a set of sites
or servers, any of which could be used to satisfy a query; by monitoring
past performance of different servers, WebSnatcher could guess which server
will provide the best performance.
Sponsor
Date Issued
1998
Extent
275666 bytes
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Technical Report