O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

HTTP Caching and Cache-busting for Content Publishers
Michael Radwin, Technical Yahoo!, Yahoo! Inc.

Track: Apache
Date: Thursday, August 4th, 2005
Time: 5:20pm - 6:05pm
Location: D135
Large web sites need to provide a personalized experience while keeping page-download times and bandwidth costs low. Radwin discusses when to use and when to avoid HTTP caching, and how to employ cache-busting techniques most effectively. Radwin also explains the top 5 caching ad cache-busting techniques for content publishers.

In particular, this talk will cover:
* Overview of HTTP caches
- Shared caches vs. private caches
- Proxy caches and HTTP server accelerators

* How to encourage caching for static content
- Cookie-free domain names
- Images Never Expire: improved browsing and page-rendering speed by avoiding network round-trips
* How to discourage caching for personalized or frequently-changing content
* How to disable caching for sensitive content
- Cache-busting for accurate hit-metering and advertising statistics
- Cache-busting for sensitive information (e.g. personal financial data)

* "Expires" vs. "Cache-Control" and other HTTP headers
* Unique URL tagging techniques that defeat proxy caches but work gracefully with browser caches