Using data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of web caching object replacement strategies

Since the midst of 1990s, a great variety of strategies have been proposed and analyzed to address the problem of web caching object replacement strategies, with each one outperforming the others in one or more basic performance metrics. In this paper, our objective is to evaluate the principal web caching object replacement strategies in terms of their efficiency, i.e. their ability to demonstrate high performance, while, at the same time, keeping the total cost for their support as low as possible. In our approach, we propose the technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a complementary to simulations tool in order to solve the efficiency problem. Using DEA we show that two strategies – namely gGDSF(1) and LRU-SP – can be considered as (1) efficient solutions for real systems and (2) good benchmarks for future research. Our work also concluded that DEA has demonstrated absolute consistency in seeking for the efficient strategies and that it is able to distinguish the champion strategy that will outperform all the others. Moreover, it has been shown that large cache sizes may subvert the struggle of some strategies to stand out.