Overview
Browser caching is one of the most effective ways to improve the performance of returning visitors. By storing assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files on the user's device, the browser can load them instantly from the disk or memory instead of making a network request.
Control Mechanisms
Caching is controlled by the server using HTTP headers, primarily Cache-Control and ETag. These headers tell the browser how long a resource is valid and how to check if it has changed.
Benefits
- Reduced Latency: Instant loading of cached assets.
- Bandwidth Savings: Less data transferred over the network.
- Lower Server Load: Fewer requests reaching the origin server.