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Caching Overview

HTTP caches help reduce perceived lag, network utilization, and may improve performance of web applications. Caches can also be used as a filtering proxy, restricting access to certain sites or resources. Caches come in two flavors, forward and reverse.

Forward Cache​

A forward cache is used to speed up the HTTP access in a network. When multiple browsers request the same content from the same cache, the content may be returned from the cache instead of being requested from the original server. Forward caches include:

  • Squid
  • Tinyproxy
  • Apache

Reverse Cache​

A reverse cache will speed up the perceived lag from an HTTP application server to any client. Reverse caches include:

  • Squid
  • Nginx
  • Tinyproxy
  • Apache.