
Gillies prototyped the first ICAP client and server for the NetCache series of internet caches in mid-2000 (known as ICAP 0.9 protocol) and produced training materials for vendors. This was implemented by embedding the preview argument size in the ICAP webserver URL when configured on the ICAP client. To provide a feature called "content preview" that allowed the ICAP server to look at the first few hundred bytes of content before deciding to process the content or not.This replaced original store-and-forward protocol with continuous streaming of content through many servers at once. To support all 3 content encodings (content-length, chunked, and TCP-close) in HTTP 1.1.One web page could be streamed through virus-scan, content-filtering, and language translation servers, quickly. Don Gillies took over the project in the spring of 2000 and enhanced the protocol in three main ways: ICAP was proposed in late 1999 by Peter Danzig and John Schuster from Network Appliance.

Off-loading value-added services from web servers to ICAP servers allows those same web servers to be scaled according to raw HTTP throughput versus having to handle these extra tasks. These ICAP servers are focused on a specific function, for example, ad insertion, virus scanning, multi-AV scanning, content translation, language translation, or content filtering. At the core of this process is a cache that will proxy all client transactions and will process them through web servers.

ICAP concentrates on leveraging edge-based devices ( caching proxies) to help deliver value-added services.

Content adaptation refers to performing the particular value added service (content manipulation) for the associated client request/response. ICAP is generally used to implement virus scanning and content filters in transparent HTTP proxy caches. The Internet Content Adaptation Protocol ( ICAP) is a lightweight HTTP-like protocol specified in RFC 3507 which is used to extend transparent proxy servers, thereby freeing up resources and standardizing the way in which new features are implemented. ( October 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations.
