Session I: Placement and Redirection -- DotSlash: A Self-Configuring and Scalable Rescue System for Handling Web Hotspots Effectively -- Dynamic Content Placement for Mobile Content Distribution Networks -- Overhaul -- Session II: Structured Overlays -- ShortCuts: Using Soft State to Improve DHT Routing -- Distributed Hashtable on Pre-structured Overlay Networks -- Session III: Architectural Issues -- Application Networking – An Architecture for Pervasive Content Delivery -- Data Integrity Framework and Language Support for Active Web Intermediaries -- Xeja: A Scalable Channel-Based Multi-source Content Distribution System -- Session IV: Multimedia Caching -- Segment-Based Adaptive Caching for Streaming Media Delivery on the Internet -- A Client-Based Web Prefetching Management System Based on Detection Theory -- Structured Partially Caching Proxies for Mixed Media -- Session V: Caching in Peer-to-Peer Systems -- Performance Evaluation of Distributed Prefetching for Asynchronous Multicast in P2P Networks -- On the Equivalence of Forward and Reverse Query Caching in Peer-to-Peer Overlay Networks -- Session VI: Algorithms -- FatNemo: Building a Resilient Multi-source Multicast Fat-Tree -- A Real-Time Selection Method of an Acceptable Transcoding Path in a MPEG21 DIA for Mobile Terminals -- Design and Analysis of a Variable Bit Rate Caching Algorithm for Continuous Media Data -- Session VII: Systems Management -- A Configuration Tool for Caching Dynamic Pages -- Towards Informed Web Content Delivery -- Session VIII: Systems Evaluation -- Unveiling the Performance Impact of Lossless Compression to Web Page Content Delivery -- An Empirical Study of a Segment-Based Streaming Proxy in an Enterprise Environment -- Bottlenecks and Their Performance Implications in E-commerce Systems.

Since the start of the International Workshop on Web Caching and Content Distribution (WCW) in 1996, it has served as the premiere meeting for researchers and practitioners to exchange results and visions on all aspects of content caching, distribution, and delivery. Building on the success of the previous WCW meetings, WCW 2004 extended its scope and covered interesting research and deployment areas relating to content services as they move through the Internet. This year, WCW was held in Beijing, China. Although it was the first time that WCW was held in Asia, we received more than 50 high quality papers from five continents. Fifteen papers were accepted as regular papers and 6 papers as synopses to appear in the proceedings. The topics covered included architectural issues, routing and placement, caching in both traditional content delivery networks as well as in peer-- peer systems, systems management and deployment, and performance evaluation. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who submitted papers to WCW 2004 for their valued contribution to the workshop. This event would not have been possible without the broad and personal support and the invaluable suggestions and contributions of the members of the program committee and the steering committee.