6 of the Best Free Linux Web Caches
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is considered to be the
fundamental protocol of the web. This simple request/response
protocol is used for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information
systems. The web consumes a large portion of internet traffic.
With HTTP, a client makes a request for a resource to a
server, and the server delivers messages with additional content such
as images, style sheets and JavaScripts. HTTP dictates how
these messages are displayed and transmitted, and how web servers and
browsers should respond to various commands.
The developers of the HTTP protocol realised at an early stage
that there was going to be rapid growth in web traffic. This continues
to be the case. For example between 2000-2010, internet usage increased
by more than 400%, much of which was accounted for by web traffic. With
the anticipated insatiable demand for the web, developers added
powerful caching primitives.
It is a demonstrable fact that the internet has changed
individuals' expectations of the speed of content delivery. The same
individuals who used to be content to wait a couple of days for a
letter to be received now expect emails to be delivered within a matter
of seconds. The same applies to web browsing. A slow-loading website is
a recipe for online disaster even if the site is informative, well
structured and organised. When it comes to interactive web usage, what
really matters is median latency.
Web caches have become a vital mechanism for
optimising the amount of data that is delivered in a given
period of time. Good web caches also help to minimise latency,
serving pages as quickly as possible. This helps to prevent the end
user from becoming impatient having to wait for content to
be delivered. Web caches optimise the data flow between client and
server. They also help to converse bandwidth by caching
frequently-delivered content. If you need to reduce server load
and improve delivery speed of your content, it is definitely worth
exploring the benefits offered by web cache software.
This type of software is primarily used by Internet Service
Providers (ISPs), backbone providers, large intranets and enterprises.
Web caches are very versatile, and are used in a number of different
systems such as search engines, web proxies, and forward caches.
In this article, we feature the best open source software that
caches web content, optimising and cleaning the network traffic.
To provide an insight into the open source software that is
available, we have compiled a list of 6 of our favorite web cache
software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here
for anyone who needs to reduce bandwidth usage, improve latency, and
minimise server load.
So, let's explore the 6 web caches at hand.
For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full
description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together
with links to relevant resources and reviews.
| Web Caches |
| nginx |
Very powerful and efficient web server and reverse proxy |
| Varnish
Cache |
Web
accelerator written with performance and flexibility in mind |
| Squid |
High-performance proxy caching server and
web cache daemon |
| Traffic
Server |
High-performance
building block for cloud services |
| Polipo |
Fast and lightweight caching web proxy |
| eAccelerator |
PHP
accelerator and optimizer derived from the MMCache extension |
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Last Updated Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 11:17 AM EDT
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