Enhanced Content Delivery - Edge Caching

 

Customers won't wait around for your Web site images and videos to load. If it takes more than a few seconds, they're off to another site. Edge Caching cuts page load time, increases site performance, keeping customers on your website and not someone else's.

What is 'Edge Caching' and how does it work?

Edge caching is the ability to distribute content from a local Web server to caching servers that are closer to the end user - ie nearer the "edge". End users experience faster loading web pages, and designers can tailor content accordingly.

The end user requests a page from the cache server just as he would from any website, using a domain name that is specific to the caching server. When the caching server receives the request, it checks to see if it has a cached page that is specific to that URL. If it does, it serves that page. If not, it requests the page from the origin server and saves the output of that page to the cache. This reduces the work the origin Web server has to do, since the pages are served primarily from the cache.

Another advantage of edge caching is that there are multiple edge servers handling requests. When the browser asks the DNS server to resolve the domain name of the caching server, the DNS server responds with the closest edge server to the user. The pages are then cached on this edge server. This reduces the number of hops the user has to take to get the requested pages. The transaction can be even faster if the pages are already cached from another user's traffic.

Hostway's Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Hostway's Content Delivery Network employs Edge Caching. The CDN consists of a group of servers strategically deployed in Hostway's multiple datacentres worldwide, currently including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Together, the servers determine the fastest delivery route to to the end-user. Web objects are retrieved in parallel with Hostway's patent-pending technology.

See the Difference!

The following pages contain embedded image files. The "original" link loads the Web page without using Edge Caching. The "enhanced" link loads the same page using Edge Caching CDN servers. Look at the timer on the top of each page to see the Edge Caching difference for yourself!
 

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