Abnormal Web usage control by proxy strategies

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become an extremely popular information service. Large HTTP packets result in network congestion. Proxy cache servers are widely deployed on the Internet to overcome this obstacle. However, the approach yields an undesirable phenomenon – a small set of users misuse proxy servers to mirror the entire contents of Web sites. This behavior wastes network resources, increases WWW servers’ loads, increases users’ waiting time, and violates copyrights. Approaches to designing a proxy server with WWW usage control and to making the proxy server effective on local area networks are proposed to prevent such abnormal WWW access and to prioritize WWW usage. Finally, a system, ProxyBreaker, is implemented to demonstrate the approaches. The implementation reveals that the proposed approaches are effective, such that the abnormal Web access does not reoccur.