Summary
Although it is unlikely many Web developers will need to implement a Web cache, because this task is traditionally assigned to network administrators, all Web developers will interact with Web caches in one way or another. By understanding the procedures that Web caches use to achieve caching, you can be better prepared to debug complex situations.
I highly recommend creating a Web cache in order to help visualize and elaborate on the points made in this chapter. Squid is a freely available open source Web cache found at http://www.squid-cache.org/.
The next chapter covers a few methods of distributing Web traffic. This can help improve the performance of your applications by expanding the capacity of your Web serving environment.
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