Prefetching Mechanism using the User's File Access Pattern Profile in Mobile Computing Environment
Changho Choi, Myungil Kim, Sung‐Jo Kim · 2000
In the mobile computing environment, in order to make copies of important files available when being disconnected the mobile host(client) must store them in its local cache while the connection is maintained. In this paper, we propose the prefetching mechanism for the client to save files which may be accessed in the near future. Our mechanism utilizes analyzer, prefetch-list producer, and prefetch manager. The analyzer records file access patterns of the user in a FAP(File Access Patterns) profile. Using the profile, the prefetch-list producer creates the prefetch-list. The prefetch manager requests a file server to return this list. We set the parameter TRP(Threshold of Reference Probability) to ensure that only reasonably related files can be prefetched. The prefetch-list producer adds the files to a prefetch-list if their reference probability is greater than the TRP. We also use the parameter TACP(Threshold of Access Counter Probability) to reduce the hoarding size required to store a prefetch-list. Finally, we measure the metrics such as the cache hit ratio, the number of files referenced by the client after disconnection and the hoarding size. The simulation results show that the performance of our mechanism is superior to that of the LRU caching mechanism. Our results also show that prefetching with the TACP can reduce the hoard size while maintaining similar performance of prefetching without TACP.