Web object caching includes all objects delivered through HTTP and HTTPS that can be cached, including large video objects like static VoDs and YouTube video. The size of objects that can be cached is limited only by the total available cache space, determined by the managed appliance’s model. The proxy cache is separate from the appliance’s data store. When objects for a given website are already present in the cache, the system terminates the connection locally and serves the content from the cache. This saves the connection setup time and also the bytes to be fetched over WAN.

The maximum size of a single object is unlimited. An object remains in the cache for the amount of the time specified in the cache control header. When the time limit expires, the SteelHead evicts the object from the cache. The cache sizes range from 50 GB to 800 GB.