Differences in cost and benefit of prefetching in circuit-switched and packet-switched networks

Prefetching of data is candidate technology for migration of negative effects caused by low-bandwidth and high-delay connections, especially common in mobile wireless scenarios. An inevitable side effect of prefetching is increased overall transferred data volume. This side effect is investigated and set in relation to the achieved reduction in user waiting time. Simulations on request/response level have been performed to investigate the distinct influence of prefetching in circuit-switched and packet-switched networks on network costs. Simulation results are presented and discussed. Results show that while prefetching can achieve the desired reduction of waiting time for both circuit-switched and packet-switched networks, these gains are coupled with pronounced increase in network cost for packet-switched networks but with slight decrease in network costs for circuit-switched networks.