A transparent replication of HTTP service

We developed Web++, a prototype system based on user-transparent geographic replication which aims at improving the response time and the reliability of the HTTP service. Web++ extends the current Web client/server architecture with additional capabilities. The extension is provided via Java servlets at the server side and applets at the client side. The servlets pre-process the requested documents such that each logical URL is replaced by a list of physical URLs corresponding to the list of the resource´s replica. An applet is automatically downloaded to the client machines together with the first request of each new user session. For subsequent requests within a user session, the applet chooses the physical URT, that corresponds to a resource held by an available server that is expected to deliver the best response time for the server