Several layers of caching

The last two topics were about various aspects of client side caching. Also there was a topic about cache integrity check. For now let's review possible overall caching schema:

1. Web Optimizer can get optimized HTML code from its own cache. And output it to the browser. It's the first layer of caching — on the server side.
2. Otherwise Web Optimizer gets raw results from CMS engine (HTML code). But they can be already cached (in CMS). Web Optimizer doesn't touch internal CMS caching logic, only uses it if it's available. So here can be the second layer of caching logic — also on the server side.
3. During client side optimization performance Web Optimizer usually checks (view a complete description of this logic) if there are any files ready to be served (merged and combined ones). If yes -- all is OK here, Web Optimizer uses them. It's a one more server side caching layer here.
4. Also on serving files Web Optimizer (but usually Apache web server) checks if there are gzipped versions of files — .gz ones — and uses them (via mod_rewrite or static gzip) rather than 'gzip on fly'. The fourth level of server side caching. And overall website configuration can have 1-2 more levels (i.e. on frontend proxy, nginx or squid, or on shared memory virtual disk).
5. But before files are served browser receives ready HTML code with assets' URLs. And tries to fetch them in its own cache — browser's one. If yes (Web Optimizer sets strong caching headers) - such files aren't requested from server. It's a client side caching layer.
6. If there are no such files in local cache browser requests files but local (or not very local but intermediate) proxy server can have them cached (read more about caching on proxies). So proxy server gives such files faster than initial website (and request doesn't reach the website at all). Actually client side caching layer.
7. If request reaches initial server but has conditional caching headers (ETag or Last-Modified) server can response with 304-answer (and don't send content). So it's client side caching layer too — all content is taken from client side.

Wow! It seems that there is all. As you can see there is about 7-9 different caching layers somehow smudged between end client and end server (various chain links of requests' way from your browser to the website and back to you).

If the next posts we will try to light some of these layers in details.