Is there any way to force a web server to deliver a non-cache response using the HTTP Monitor?
What does the Head Request option do under HTTP Monitor settings?
It sends an HTTP Head request rather than an HTTP GET request. A HEAD request just sends the headers but not the actual web page. You can use this to verify a large file is available without actually downloading the file.
see en.wikipedia.org/.../Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol for more information
Thanks Josh!
Still looking for help on the non-cache question?
The client side cache should not be used. Or are you wanting to prevent the webserver from caching the response on its side?
Actually I left a piece of information out of my post since I was in a hurry. We have a proxy server and we would like to force the proxy to request a new page from the webserver and not cache the response at the proxy. The idea to test internet availability/path to hosts in different networks, different tier-1 providers.
I don't think this is something we can do in APM right now.
Do you have control over the web pages you are monitoring? Usually the web page author is the one that controls if a page is cachable or not. There are certain HTTP headers the webserver can return to specify that a proxy should not cache the page.
One trick I have seen done before is to include a timestamp on the URL being queried. Since the timestamp changes every poll, the URL looks different than the other pages in the cache. APM doesn't have this feature right now, but I'll open a Feature Request for it.
Thanks for opening a Feature Request on this Josh!
We do not have control over the web pages to monitor but I was given 3 web pages/sites by our firewall team (since my original post) that are written to not be cached and APM is polling them. It would great if APM had an option and flexibility to do this.
