Patent attributes
Dynamic and selective compression for content caching is provided for improving content delivery over a digital network. The dynamic and selective compression increased server cache size for higher cache-hit ratios that offset delays associated with compressing and decompressing content. The dynamic compression involves switching between an available set of compression tools in order to compress different files with the compression tool that is optimal for that file. The selective compression involves selectively compressing the content or files with the optimal compression tool when at least a threshold amount of space savings is obtained in an acceptable amount of time. Thus, the caching server caches compressed copies of a first set of files compressed with a first compression tool, compressed copies of a second set of files compressed with a different second compression tool, and an uncompressed third set of files.