Cache Management

A key performance measure for the World Wide Web is the speed with which content is served to users. As traffic on the Web increases, users are faced with increasing delays and failures in data delivery.

Web caching is one of the key strategies that has been explored to improve performance. An important issue in many caching systems is how to decide what is cached where at any given time. Solutions have included multicast queries and directory schemes.


Caching has been employed to improve the efficiency and reliability of data delivery over the Internet. A nearby cache can serve a (cached) page quickly even if the originating server is swamped or the network path to it is congested.

Benefits:

  • Storage of popular web, video and P2P contents.
  • Reduce the download time for popular web, video and P2P contents.
  • Reduce the need of always accessing the Internet and able to deliver "locally".
  • Huge savings of international bandwidth for Service Providers.
  • Faster delivery of contents to users and maintain them satisfaction.

WebRoam UTM's cache management saves Web pages or other Internet content locally. By placing previously requested information in temporary storage, or cache, WebRoam UTM cache server both speeds up access to data and reduces demand on an enterprise's bandwidth. Cache server also allow users to access content offline, including rich media files or other documents.


Overview of proxy server caching

Caching is a feature in which the proxy server saves local copies of the files that clients request so that it can serve them quickly from the cache when they are requested again by the same or other clients.
Caching Proxy is HTTP 1.1 compliant and generally follows the HTTP 1.1 protocol for caching and determining the freshness of documents.

Cache storage
WebRoam UTM's proxy server stores the cache on both physical storage device (disk) and in system memory (RAM). Response time for a memory cache typically is faster than for a disk cache, but the size of a memory cache is limited by the amount of RAM in WebRoam UTM proxy server machine.

FTP caching
When the proxy is configured to cache requests, it can cache FTP file requests as well as HTTP file requests. However, because FTP files do not contain the same type of header information as HTTP files, expiration dates for cached FTP files are calculated differently than for other cached files.

DNS caching
To caching Web content, WebRoam UTM proxy server performs domain name server (DNS) caching. For example, when a client requests a URL from www.example.com, the proxy asks its DNS server to resolve the host name www.example.com to an IP address. The IP address is then cached to improve response time for subsequent requests to that host name. DNS caching is automatic and cannot be reconfigured.

WebRoam UTM equipped by a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, POP3, DNS. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. WebRoam UTM has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator.

WebRoam UTM Policy Management optimises the data flow between client and server to improve performance and caches frequently-used content to save bandwidth. WebRoam UTM can also route content requests to servers in a wide variety of ways to build cache server hierarchies which optimise network throughput.

WebRoam UTM Policy Management can reduce server load and improve delivery speeds to clients.

WebRoam UTM provides this complete level of protection without any performance hit. Many other UTM solutions require file caching and rebooting to accommodate updating file signatures and scanning procedures, which slows down the computer and hinders productivity. However, because WebRoam UTM can scan files of any size without caching, and handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent downloads, it offers superior performance for any size network. In addition, WebRoam UTM eliminates rebooting after the signature file update, so there is no need to interrupt productivity.