Chapter 17: Web Hosting Configuration Guide244 SmartSwitch Router User Reference ManualWeb CachingWeb caching provides a way to store frequently accessed Web objects on a cache of localservers. Each HTTP request is transparently redirected by the SSR to a configured cacheserver. When a user first accesses a Web object, that object is stored on a cache server. Eachsubsequent request for the object uses this cached object. Web caching allows multipleusers to access Web objects stored on local servers with a much faster response time thanaccessing the same objects over a WAN connection. This can also result in substantial costsavings by reducing the WAN bandwidth usage.Note: The SSR itself does not act as cache for web objects. It redirects HTTP requests tolocal servers on which the web objects are cached. One or more local servers areneeded to work as cache servers with the SSR’s web caching function.Configuring Web CachingThe following are the steps in configuring Web caching on the SSR:1. Create the cache group (a list of cache servers) to cache Web objects.2. Specify the hosts whose HTTP requests will be redirected to the cache servers. Thisstep is optional; if you do not explicitly define these hosts, then all HTTP requests areredirected.3. Apply the caching policy to an outbound interface to redirect HTTP traffic on thatinterface to the cache servers.Creating the Cache GroupYou can specify either a range of contiguous IP addresses or a list of up to four IPaddresses to define the servers when the cache group is created. If you specify multipleservers, load balancing is based on the destination address of the request. If any cacheserver fails, traffic is redirected to the other active servers.To create the cache group, enter the following command in Configure mode:Note: If a range of IP addresses is specified, the range must be contiguous and containno more than 256 IP addresses.Create the cache group. web-cache create server-list range range>|list
