In the dynamic world of technology, questions arise and solutions are sought. Stack Overflow stands as a beacon, guiding individuals through their technical difficulties with insights from experts around the globe.

In this blog, we dive into the world of Varnish, a pivotal tool for caching, web & API acceleration and content delivery, through the lens of the most asked and intriguing questions on Stack Overflow.

Varnish sits in front of the web or application server and caches its output. This means that the logs of the web server no longer paint a complete picture of your site’s traffic. To get a complete view, logging on the edge is needed.

This is why we developed Varnishlog, a powertool to perform in-depth analysis of your requests, responses, backend fetches, backend health and caching behavior–so that you can generate actionable insights to improve performance, reliability, functionality and security.

Is the era of "cheap, all-you-can-watch content” (for consumers) ending? This is the contention of a recent Guardian article examining challenges telcos face. Connecting the dots between writers’ and actors’ strikes, booming broadband use, increasing infrastructure costs and streaming, the article taps into the old adage: ”Nothing in life is free”. The notion of ”cheap” really depends on where you sit in the value chain and how you can leverage the resources available to you.From the telco perspective supporting the boom in streaming use is not “cheap” but there are strategies that can be applied to regain control.

First, it’s important to understand the economic drivers for streamers and telcos/service providers. The consumer is the source of revenue either directly in the form of subscriptions (for streaming services and broadband) or indirectly from advertising. For now let’s just focus on the supply chain players or the cost of sale elements from the streamer and broadband provider perspective.

The move from legacy distribution methods towards an all-IP streaming business model is top of mind for broadcasters, telcos and service providers. Across the industry, plans are afoot to phase out linear technologies and build infrastructure and platforms around future-proof IP-based technologies. Broadcasters are looking to move from cable and satellite to internet-based delivery. Telcos see an opportunity to bring content delivery in-house on their own network, for an expanded service offering and reduced reliance on using external CDNs for streaming.

Streaming consumption will undoubtedly increase as both digital-only homes and broadband penetration continue to rise. Combine this with a need to handle higher bitrates and more streaming use cases and you have a technical challenge on your hands: