Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) have become essential tools for optimizing website and application performance. By distributing content across a global network of servers, CDNs reduce latency, improve load times, and enhance user experience. One of the key ways CDNs can enhance performance is through caching API responses.

When an API request is made, the CDN checks its cache for a stored copy of the response. If a cached version exists and is still valid, it is served to the user immediately, bypassing the need to fetch the data from the origin server. This significantly reduces latency, especially for users located far from the origin server. Furthermore, CDNs can implement intelligent caching strategies, such as edge caching and regional caching, to optimize response times based on user location and traffic patterns.

By caching API responses, CDNs not only improve performance but also reduce load on the origin server, preventing it from becoming overwhelmed by excessive traffic. This can enhance the overall reliability and availability of the API. Additionally, CDNs can help mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks by absorbing a significant portion of the traffic, protecting the origin server from being overwhelmed.

It will be obvious that a CDN cannot be used to cache personalized responses or dynamic responses like number of articles in stock. It can very well be used for responses that can change frequently. In this cases we suggest a short time to live like 5 to 15 minutes. Doing so will force the CDN to validated cached content with the origin once within the selected interval. If a change ismade that needs to be effective immediately, we(or you) can always perform a cache flush to make this happen.