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Caching is the process of keeping (at least for a while) the most recently used items on the assumption they might be used again in the near future. This helps performance because these items are near at hand (and fast to reach). "Proxy servers," for example, are used by corporations to cache content for the users. If one user visits a site, the proxy server keeps a copy of the page on the hard disk. When the next user visits the same site, rather than actually contacting the site, the proxy server delivers the page to the user. Thus, as far as the website can determine, only a single user has visited from the corporation, but in reality, potentially hundreds of users have visited it. Such caching improves performance by reducing both the amount of traffic and the time it takes for pages to be displayed.
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