What You Need to Know About Caching Video Series
In this "unofficial" video series, Akamai Solutions Engineers Tedd Smith and CJ Arnesen explain the basics of caching: what it is, why it's important, and how to get the most out of it. A great introduction to Akamai, caching, and content delivery network (CDN) basics, this series supplements Akamai Quick Starts and User Guides to help you level set new team members and other departments within your organization.
Part 1: caching 101
The first episode in the series provides an overview of caching. A cache stores resources close to you so that you don’t need to spend time or energy to retrieve them -- much like a squirrel stashes acorns to avoid foraging for food in cold winters. Key to any CDN, caching serves content over the internet more efficiently -- increasing delivery performance, decreasing the need for compute and bandwidth, and ultimately saving money. This video covers:
Controlling your cache
Determining the best places to cache
Configuring caching settings on Akamai’s Luna Control Center
Part 2: caching 201
In the second episode, we dive deeper into some of the best practices and advanced features available in Akamai’s Property Manager. This video covers the concept of tiered caching, caching HTTP response codes, and no store vs. 0 second time to live (TTL), the length of time that content exists in cache before being refreshed.
Part 3: cache Keys
Our third episode discusses what a cache key is, how it can be used, and the options available to set cache keys. A cache key is a unique string that lets Akamai edge servers look for your content when requests hit them. If you’re that squirrel, think of this as the color, smell, and shape which would help us identify the right acorn for you! Selecting the correct cache key will ensure the maximum cache footprint and increase cache hits.
Part 4: purging Cache
The final episode in the series explores how to remove a file from the Akamai cache. In this video, we discuss why you would want to remove a cached file from a CDN, the differences between deleting and invalidation, and the various methods Akamai offers to remove files from the cache.
Learn more
Please check out the following links for more details about caching or ask your Akamai account team for help in optimizing your cache setup.
Blog post introducing the video series on the Akamai blog
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