Dynamic Caching- Emerging Trend, Need of Tomorrow

Dynamic Caching- Emerging Trend, Need of Tomorrow

Authored by Amit Singh, Managing Director, Zenlayer India

Dynamic content caching is a term that's synonymously trending with discussions around Content Delivery Network (CDN) industry. In fact, with the growing popularity around CDN Dynamic Content Caching is often the claim you will hear from most CDN players. Let me simplify for you how the modern technology makes caching of dynamic content possible.

Most content on the website is collection of both static and dynamic content pages. The word 'static' we know is something that remains constant. In computing, static content is any file that is stored in a server and is the same every time it is delivered to users like in the case of eBook, whitepaper, homepage of a website. On the other hand, dynamic content refers to any digital content that keeps changing based on factors specific to the user such as time of visit, location, and device. Text, audio and video formats are examples of dynamic content. This type of web content adjusts dynamically or in real-time allowing websites to individually adapt to different site visitors. Customised newsletters, emails are the most basic forms of dynamic content. Other examples include landing pages on website, forms and purchases, product pages with bounce offers like sales and coupons, targeted website advertisements, voice assistants, etc. 

Dynamic content furnishes different information based on who the viewer is. Online store experience is a lot different for a frequent shopper than a first-time user. Online news website that displays latest news and articles on its web pages, also has dynamic content that keeps getting updated. Your blog feed, social media feed, personalized emails, are other examples of dynamic content that look entirely different for every user. Even interactive content that engages the users allowing them to interact with the content in order to change it are mostly dynamic in nature, like the comment area of your blog, social media sharing buttons, call-to-action buttons on a website and the popular 'facetime' or video chat via smart devices. But how is this constantly changing dynamic content being displayed on webpages, tv or smart devices in real-time? This is where CDN industry services and dynamic caching jointly play their roles.

CDNs and Dynamic Caching

'Caching' in computing, refers to the process of storing data or copies of files in a temporary storage area called cache. A cache's primary purpose is to increase data retrieval performance by reducing the need to access the underlying slower storage layer. Caching enables quick access to the stored or cached content. Dynamic content is mostly event-driven for each user implying that the same cannot be served to multiple users and hence is difficult to cache. However, caching dynamic content is now viable with advanced CDNs the right technology mechanisms in place.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) which today is a vital component of almost any modern web application, is a network of powerful computers located in geographically distinct places. It is designed to serve web content to visitors with great performance and efficiency. Ecommerce or media sites utilize the power of CDNs to frequently update content such as latest prices, news, weather forecasts, articles, featured products, breaking news, video etc on their web pages. Majority of content delivery networks frequently manage caching for sites through a global server network. CDNs can be configured to retrieve data from the origin servers and deliver dynamic content that is unique to the requestor. Intelligent caches and CDNs are able to quickly inspect requests and modify the behaviour of the caching logic as per requirements.

How dynamic caching works?

The HTML document is the backbone of the any webpage and is the first connection point between website origin server and the browser. With a large number of visitors, there is stress on the origin servers. But when the HTML document is cached, the caching server is the only one making a request to the origin server irrespective of the number of visitors. Thus, the website servers are freed up for critical transactions. 

When a user visits a website using a CDN, and web traffic is geo-dispersed, it's not always feasible and certainly not cost effective to replicate entire infrastructure across the globe.  The traffic routes through the server that is closest to the user and serves up cached or stored versions of the site resources. This allows the site to load faster and eliminate requests back to the origin server. For caching, CDN reduces load on application origin and delivers a local copy of the content from a nearby cache server. 

Role of cache servers

Proxy cache servers are the basic elements of a CDN's network data centres, which are strategically situated around the world. Based on traffic patterns of individual regions, these points of presence (PoP) are chosen. Active locations with many users may have several data centres and remote locations with few users may have only one PoP to cover large geographic region. Cache servers act as a repository for website content, providing local users with quicker access to stored files. The cache server closest to the end user is chosen to reduce the connection time needed for transmission of website data.

Dynamic content is generated by running scripts in a CDN cache instead of a distant server thus reducing the response time to client requests and speeding up loading of dynamic web pages. It is served to client devices based on parameters like device type, time of day, user location, or data from third party APIs. Often, most content on a dynamic webpage is same for all users, and only few elements are dynamic. The dynamic content acceleration service leverages the high-quality connectivity between the network PoPs to improve response time. This service mainly takes advantage of the private back bone Software Defined Network (SDN) and achieves better 'back-to-parent/origin' network connectivity. 

Advantages of Dynamic Caching 

  • Improved data retrieval and application performance 
  • Reduced hosting and server costs
  • Reduced latency and improved IOPS for Q&A portals, gaming, media sharing, and social networking
  • Dedicated caching layer enables systems and applications to run independently 
  • Data can span multiple cache servers and can be stored in a central location 
  • Controls like TTLs (Time to live) for successful cache and cache miss
  • Decreased load on origin server
  • Faster loading of sites
  • Reduced bandwidth costs 
  • Improved access speed and user experience
  • Reliable content delivery
  • Highly resilient, secure and stable CDN cache servers 

Uses of Dynamic Caching

  • Website owners can gather visitor data like frequency of visits, pages visited etc and deliver personalized, dynamic web content at no additional cost 
  • Better interactive and personalised user experience
  • Reduced load on the backend database and reduced time to load site
  • Increased visitor time on site due to browser history insights and display of relevant content 
  • Increased conversion rates, bounce rates, and return visits
  • High performance and no page layout break on multiple devices
  • Easy maintenance
  • Predictable Performance during peak traffic events like IPL or festivals
  • Eliminate Database Hotspots
  • Increase Read Throughput (IOPS)- In addition to lower latency, in-memory systems also offer much higher request rates (IOPS)

With 5G reaching India soon, and some parts of the world heading towards 7G, we can soon expect video replacing voice, text, and everything in between. Dynamic Caching could become the panacea to avoid overloading of data.

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