Read messages are issued by a client for data stored in a storage system. A client agent mediates between the client and the storage system. Each sequence of read requests generated by a single thread of execution in the client to read a specific data segment in the storage is defined as a client read session. Each read request sent from the client agent to the storage system includes a position and a size for reading. The read-ahead cache and a current sequence ID value for each client read session are maintained. For each incoming read request, the storage system determines whether to further process the read request based on a sequence ID value of the read request, and the source from which to obtain data for the read request, and which of the data to load into the read-ahead cache according to data positions of the read request.