Performance evaluation of caching systems is an old and widely investigatedresearch topic. The research community is once again actively working on thistopic because the Internet is evolving towards new transfer modes, whichenvisage to cache both contents and instructions within the network. Inparticular, there is interest in characterizing multi-cache systems, in whichrequests not satisfied by a cache are forwarded to other caches. In this field, this paper contributes as follows. First, we devise a simplebut accurate approximate analysis for caches fed by general "renewal" trafficpatterns. Second, we characterize and model the traffic statistics for theoutput (miss) stream. Third, we show in the simple example case of tandemcaches how the resulting output stream model can be conveniently exploited toanalyze the performance of subsequent cache stages. The main novelty of ourwork stems in the ability to handle traffic patterns beyond the traditionalindependent reference model, thus permitting simple assessment of cascade ofcaches as well as improved understanding of the phenomena involved in cachehierarchies.
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