A short freshness lifetime and a cache-fill lock solve different parts of a traffic burst.

A microcache serves fresh entries briefly and coalesces misses explicitly

A microcache keeps reusable responses for a short freshness lifetime, often a few seconds. Requests for the same selected representation can reuse a fresh entry during that window. The response might lag a new origin update, but it is not HTTP-stale merely because it came from a cache. Expiration, permission to serve stale content, and concurrent cache filling are separate policies. ...

March 12, 2028 · 6 min · XB Field Notes