Improving Performance - Static and Dynamic Web content
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When the World Wide Web was in its infancy, it consisted of primarily static information. Dial-up connections were slow, which was fine because online traffic was light. Since those early years, the Internet has changed dramatically-with content becoming increasingly dynamic.
Dynamic content evolved as a result of the desire to increase interactivity on the Internet. Dynamic content reflects information that can change with every user request. The content is a result of the server-side execution of a set of instructions hidden within the requested page. Once the code is executed and a static HTML page is created and received by the browser, the web server discards the results from memory. Database-driven Web sites, such as news portals or e-commerce portals, are typical examples of dynamic content sites. Dynamic content puts a heavy load on the Web server due to the immense processing power required to produce dynamic results for thousands of requests in real time. Database servers are also hard at work providing the dynamic data to these Web servers.
Proxy caching
Forward Proxy cache
Forward Proxy caching is deployed in front of web browsers for an enterprise's internal user’s access. The cache stores frequently requested content and when users access external Web information, instead of going across the Internet, the cache delivers the stored content from a closer proximity. For example, if www.php.net, www.yahoo.com and www.google.com are widely accessed by the employees, the forward proxy cache would hold a copy of these files (see figure 1 below).
This technique provides accelerated performance for the company's internal users and conserves the external bandwidth cost related to retrieving the documents from the Internet. The forward proxy cache is not related at all to the Web server performance.
Next: Reverse Proxy cache >>
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