Caching

Web Caching refers to a technique whereby http pages, documents and images are stored temporarily, locally on a client computer browser, or on a proxy server device in the LAN. This means that heavily frequented web pages do not need to be reloaded every time a new request is made, but can be served locally, saving bandwidth, reducing latency and saving CPU usage. A strict timeout rule needs to be applied to the cache, as many websites are dynamically populated and updated, and content may be stale. A reverse proxy cache system is where the caching devices front-end the web servers, limiting LAN or server-side requests, although this does not benefit WAN bandwidth usage.