Systems and methods are described for accelerating a user experience involving transactions with a remote file server by identifying and prefetching simple message block (SMB) requests. Embodiments exploit applications' usage of certain SMB request offset value patterns to reliably prefetch SMB requests. Requests from a user to a remote file server are intercepted by a proxy server disposed in the communications network relatively local to the file server. When a known SMB request offset value is detected and other conditions are met, a set of other SMB request offset values is prefetched by the proxy server according to a predetermined pattern. These prefetched requests may be sent, along with the original request, in a single transaction over the communications link from the proxy server to the requesting user (e.g., via a proxy client associated with the requesting user).