Method and apparatus for providing remote site administrators with user hits on mirrored web sites

In a system having a hit accumulation server and one or more proxy servers, each of said one or more proxy servers including a local cache having stored therein one or more cached documents, the proxy coupled to a client and to a remote server, a method of tracking requests for documents stored in a proxy comprising the steps of:

• a proxy server receiving a client request for a document;
• the proxy recording a hit for the document if the document is available from the proxy server's local cache, the proxy server notifying the hit accumulation server that the client request was serviced from the local cache, and the hit accumulation server recording the hit and a path of the document to a table if the document corresponds to one of a set of monitored Uniform Resource Locator (URL) patterns;
• and
• providing an indication of the number of hits for the documents to a remote site administrator.

A method of tracking hits by a proxy, the proxy including one or more proxy servers and a hit accumulation server, each of said one or more proxy servers including a local cache having stored therein recently requested documents, the proxy coupled to a client and to a remote server, the method comprising the steps of:

• a proxy server receiving a client request for a document;
• the proxy server determining whether to service the client request from its local cache or whether to forward the client request to another server;
• inserting a new log entry onto a common storage if the proxy server services the client request from its local cache, the new log entry including a location of the document;
• the accumulation server detecting the new log entry by monitoring the common storage;
• the accumulation server comparing the location of the document to a predetermined set of directories to determine whether or not to record the hit;
• recording the hit if the location of the document matches a directory in the predetermined set of directories;
• and
• providing the number of hits for a set of documents located in a first subset of directories of the predetermined set of directories to a remote site administrator.

A machine-readable medium having stored thereon data representing sequences of instructions, said sequences of instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause said processor to perform the steps of:

• maintaining information regarding client requests that are serviced from a document cache of a proxy server;
• receiving a client request for a document;
• determining whether to service the client request from the document cache or whether to forward the client request to another server;
• updating a count if the client request is serviced from the document cache;
• and
• providing the information to a remote site administrator.