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Summary:
On the World Wide Web, speed and efficiency are vital. Users have little patience for slow web pages, while network administrators want to make the most of their available bandwidth. A properly designed web cache reduces network traffic and improves access times to popular web sites—a boon to network administrators and web users alike.

Web Caching hands you all the technical information you need to design, deploy, and operate an effective web caching service. It starts with the basics of how web caching works, from the HTTP headers that govern cachability to cache validation and replacement algorithms.

Topics covered in this book include:

Designing an effective cache solution

Configuring web browsers to use a cache

Setting up a collection of caches that can talk to each other

Configuring an interception cache or proxy

Monitoring and fine-tuning the performance of a cache

Configuring web servers to cooperate with web caches

Benchmarking cache products

The book also covers the important political aspects of web caching, including privacy, intellectual property, and security issues.

Internet service providers, large corporations, or educational institutions—in short, any network that provides connectivity to a wide variety of users—can reap enormous benefit from running a well-tuned web caching service. Web Caching shows you how to do it right.

Table of Contents:

	Preface	ix
1.	Introduction	1
1.1	Web Architecture	2
1.2	Web Transport Protocols	6
1.3	Why Cache the Web?	10
1.4	Why Not Cache the Web?	13
1.5	Types of Web Caches	14
1.6	Caching Proxy Features	17
1.7	Meshes, Clusters, and Hierarchies	18
1.8	Products	19
2.	How Web Caching Works	21
2.1	HTTP Requests	21
2.2	Is It Cachable?	24
2.3	Hits, Misses, and Freshness	34
2.4	Hit Ratios	37
2.5	Validation	38
2.6	Forcing a Cache to Refresh	41
2.7	Cache Replacement	44
3.	Politics of Web Caching	48
3.1	Privacy	49
3.2	Request Blocking	55
3.3	Copyright	57
3.4	Offensive Content	63
3.5	Dynamic Web Pages	64
3.6	Content Integrity	65
3.7	Cache Busting and Server Busting	66
3.8	Advertising	68
3.9	Trust	69
3.10	Effects of Proxies	70
4.	Configuring Cache Clients	72
4.1	Proxy Addresses	73
4.2	Manual Proxy Configuration	73
4.3	Proxy Auto-Configuration Script	77
4.4	Web Proxy Auto-Discovery	83
4.5	Other Configuration Options	84
4.6	The Bottom Line	84
5.	Interception Proxying and Caching	86
5.1	Overview	87
5.2	The IP Layer: Routing	89
5.3	The TCP Layer: Ports and Delivery	96
5.4	The Application Layer: HTTP	100
5.5	Debugging Interception	101
5.6	Issues	102
5.7	To Intercept or Not To Intercept	108
6.	Configuring Servers to Work with Caches	109
6.1	Important HTTP Headers	110
6.2	Being Cache-Friendly	115
6.3	Being Cache-Unfriendly	127
6.4	Other Issues for Content Providers	128
7.	Cache Hierarchies	132
7.1	How Hierarchies Work	132
7.2	Why Join a Hierarchy?	134
7.3	Why Not Join a Hierarchy?	136
7.4	Optimizing Hierarchies	142
8.	Intercache Protocols	144
8.1	ICP	145
8.2	CARP	156
8.3	HTCP	158
8.4	Cache Digests	159
8.5	Which Protocol to Use	163
9.	Cache Clusters	165
9.1	The Hot Spare	166
9.2	Throughput and Load Sharing	167
9.3	Bandwidth	168
10.	Design Considerations for Caching Services	170
10.1	Appliance or Software Solution	170
10.2	Disk Space	173
10.3	Memory	175
10.4	Network Interfaces	175
10.5	Operating Systems	176
10.6	High Availability	177
10.7	Intercepting Traffic	178
10.8	Load Sharing	179
10.9	Location	180
10.10	Using a Hierarchy	180
11.	Monitoring the Health of Your Caches	182
11.1	What to Monitor?	183
11.2	Monitoring Tools	186
12.	Benchmarking Proxy Caches	191
12.1	Metrics	192
12.2	Performance Bottlenecks	194
12.3	Benchmarking Tools	197
12.4	Benchmarking Gotchas	203
12.5	How to Benchmark a Proxy Cache	206
12.6	Sample Benchmark Results	210
A.	Analysis of Production Cache Trace Data	215
B.	Internet Cache Protocol	235
C.	Cache Array Routing Protocol	246
D.	Hypertext Caching Protocol	254
E.	Cache Digests	266
F.	HTTP Status Codes	274
G.	U.S.C. 17 Sec. 512. Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online	279
H.	List of Acronyms	282
	Bibliography	288
	Index	291