Feature Proposal: Performance With Apache ModCache

Motivation

Caching using apache module could lead to improve caching with few coding effort.

Description and Documentation

The apache mod_cache module seems to be mature enought by now to help improve TWiki's performance. Using this apache standard module would not affect coding, just configuration :

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/caching.html

Examples

• Images and files located in the twiki/pub directory

Impact

• Documentation
• ApacheConfigGenerator

Implementation

-- Contributors: OlivierThompson - 02 Sep 2008

Discussion

mod_cache adds little on top of enabling ETags and the mod_expire settings - which I Blogged about and added to the ApacheConfigGenerator many months ago - which avoids having a browser re-request the static files, thus saving the server in many more ways.

It would be interesting to know some actual performance numbers - I tried out mod_cache last year, and found that it wasn't an improvement.

-- SvenDowideit - 03 Sep 2008

How does this relate to CacheControlHeaders? There are some useful links at BrowserAndProxyCacheControl and CategoryCaching. Generally I see HTTP headers that control caching as a useful add-on to server-side caching, but it's not easy to get this right in all cases particularly with dynamic pages.

-- RichardDonkin - 09 Sep 2008