Check if a site has a cache system

This guide explains how to get information about the presence of a cache system on a site using the command curl.

Preamble

• In the world of system programming and administration, it is often necessary to determine whether a website uses a cache system to improve its performance.
• Cache systems like Fastly are commonly used to temporarily store data in order to serve users more quickly.
• By following these steps, you will be able to determine whether a website uses a cache system to improve its performance and understand the operation and optimization of the sites.

Using the curl command

curl is a command line tool for transferring data using URLs.

The option -svo /dev/null is used to perform a silent request (-s), display detailed information about the request (-v) and redirect output data to /dev/null to ignore them (/dev/null is a special device on Unix/Linux systems that behaves like a trash). -H "Fastly-Debug: true" is an HTTP header added to the query to request Fastly specific debugging information.

Run command

Run the following command in your terminal:

curl -svo /dev/null [url] -H “Fastly-Debug: true”

and replace [url] by the address of the website you wish to verify.

If the site uses Fastly or another similar cache system, you will see specific debugging information in the output of the command. Details provided may include information on HTTP requests and responses, as well as information on cache and performance.