Understanding the Need for Caching and Proxies

HTTP is a very simple, yet powerful, protocol. This chapter explains how to take advantage of caching and proxying features that allow you to implement scalable, flexible architectures. Caching allows you to simultaneously reduce the load on your servers and allow faster access to your site by quickly returning frequently requested content. Proxying allows you to create a control point for HTTP requests, which may be used to unify content from various backend servers as well as improving performance.