For Blazing Fast Web Site Performance, Caching Is King

The quickest way to a Web user's heart is through her eyeballs. That means providing your customers a rich, interactive, and blazing fast experience. The fastest sites on the Internet all have one thing in common: They use caching technologies aggressively. These sites use and optimize three levels of Web caching: browser, edge, and server. Application development professionals who focus on just one or two but not all three of these caching levels are missing an opportunity for even faster performance. Browser caching reduces page load times, mostly for repeat customers. Edge caching reduces network latency when sending content over large distances. Server caching overcomes bottlenecks in application design and intercommunications, such as voluminous database queries and service-oriented architecture (SOA) traffic. Using caching in your customer Web site is not a substitute for good architecture and best practices; it is the best practice. Web caching will amplify strong Web-page design, architecture scalability, quality code, and infrastructure deployment — the four major elements of blazing fast Web sites.