Caching Score: https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/
Request flow
Summary
GradeA+
642/642
Requested URL checks
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
100
What is this check, and why should you care
A cached response is reusable for the duration of its freshness lifetime, defined in RFC 9111 §4.2. The freshness lifetime is taken from Cache-Control: s-maxage or max-age (§5.2), and falls back to the Expires header (§5.3) or a heuristic if neither is set. The longer the freshness lifetime, the higher the cache hit ratio at any given traffic level.
To get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
The current cache lifetime is 2764800 seconds (1 month and 4 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
100
What is this check, and why should you care
Using a CDN is extremely useful for caching purposes.
Maximum possible points
50
What is this check, and why should you care
The time that it takes for a user's browser to receive the first byte of page content.
The lower the TTFB, the faster your site will be perceived by the end user.
To get maximum points, your TTFB must be less than or equal to 30ms. If your TTFB is more than 1 second then you get no points here.
Maximum possible points
50
What is this check, and why should you care
An ETag is an opaque identifier for a specific version of a resource, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.3. When a client revisits a URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-None-Match request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.2); if the server still considers the response current it returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of W/"1781052298" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
30
What is this check, and why should you care
The Last-Modified response header carries the date the resource was last changed, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.2. When a client revisits the URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-Modified-Since request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.3); if the resource has not changed the server returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
30
What is this check, and why should you care
Having tiered caching can help improve the cache hit ratio of your site because it provides an additional layer of caching in front of your origin.
Maximum possible points
25
What is this check, and why should you care
HTTP 404 (Not Found) is one of the response status codes that RFC 9110 §15.1 marks as heuristically cacheable, and RFC 9111 §4.2.2 defines the heuristic-freshness rules a cache may apply when no explicit freshness is provided. Caching 404s — even briefly — offloads repeated probes (broken links, scanners, missing assets) from your origin.
To get maximum points, you need to have the ability to cache an HTTP 404 for any amount of time.
This check requested the URL https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/cachingscorebrokenurltest.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
HTTP compression reduces the size of a response body by eliminating redundancy. The client advertises supported algorithms in the Accept-Encoding request header, and the server reports which one it used in the Content-Encoding response header — both are defined in RFC 9110 §8.4.
The four common encodings each have their own specification: gzip (RFC 1952), deflate (RFC 1951), br / Brotli (RFC 7932), and zstd / Zstandard (RFC 8878). Smaller responses load faster and use less bandwidth, which especially matters on mobile networks.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 8+ provides an Internal Page Cache module recommended for small to medium-sized websites.
There is extremely limited value in using this module, even when you are using Fastly and having a relatively high cache lifetime of 1 month and 4 days.
To get maximum points, you must have the module page_cache disabled.
See Drupal's documentation on the Internal Page Cache module. Also, Wim Leers wrote a really awesome blog post on the release of this module with important background.
Maximum possible points
20
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal sets a session cookie (named SESS<hash> over HTTP, or SSESS<hash> over HTTPS) the first time the session is read or written during a request. When a session cookie is present, most reverse proxies and CDNs will bypass their cache entirely for all HTML responses, because the response is considered personalised.
Anonymous page requests should not need a session at all. Contributed modules known to start a session for anonymous users include:
- Smart IP — stores geolocation data in
$_SESSIONfor anonymous users (#1897126). - Flag — starts an anonymous session as part of determining flag actions (#2894095).
- H5P — creates anonymous sessions even for components that don't need it (#3126134).
- Textsize — stores text size preferences in the session (#1041878).
To get maximum points, the response must not include a SESS or SSESS cookie. If it does, identify which module is starting the session and either disable it, reconfigure it, or find an alternative that does not require a session for anonymous users.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
CSS aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Javascript aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 9.5+ introduces a new debug setting to make it easier to debug render caching. This setting will add cache debugging output for each rendered element.
The main issue with this is that this slows down your page loads (on top increasing your page weight).
To get maximum points, you must disable the render cache debug.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 7+ provides a Statistics module to which records content view statistics in Drupal's database.
The main issue with this module is that it sends an un-cacheable HTTP POST request to your site to record a 'content view' statistic. This does not scale well as you Drupal site gets more traffic.
To get maximum points, you must disable the statistics module.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
Drupal 8+ uses Twig for templating, and the Twig template engine offers a debug tool to which emits out a list of template filenames in the HTML source.
The main issue with this is that you often also have other Twig related performance issues as well, e.g. automatic reloading.
To get maximum points, you must disable Twig debug.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
FBCLID is one such parameter that can be stripped by your caching server. This query parameter only really serves a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/?fbclid=1781052299.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
GCLID and GCLSRC are two such parameters that can be stripped by your caching server. These query parameters only really serve a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/?gclsrc=1781052299&gclid=1781052299.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
TTCLID is one such parameter that can be stripped by your caching server. This query parameter only really serves a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read it from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/?ttclid=1781052299.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
You can increase the cache hit rate of your site by stripping certain query parameters from the cache key.
UTM is a collection of parameters that can be stripped by your caching server. These query parameters only really serve a purpose for Javascript to read, and Javascript can still read them from the browser URL.
You can add this VCL snippet to your Fastly service (in the recv subroutine). Fastly documentation on querystring.filter.
This check requested the URL https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/?utm_source=1781052299&utm_medium=1781052299&utm_campaign=1781052299&utm_id=1781052299.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
There is a SPAM protection module in Drupal called Honeypot.
The honeypot module has a feature that adds a time based hidden form field to forms to protect against bots filling them in too quickly. This is a nice feature, however it happens to disable caching for the entire page. This is terrible for high traffic sites.
It is recommended to disable this time based feature, and only use the core honeypot feature of a hidden input field.
Maximum possible points
5
What is this check, and why should you care
The language_cookie module breaks proxy caching because it makes Drupal’s response vary by a cookie, which most HTTP caches don’t handle efficiently.
The module also has a side effect of breaking Drupal’s page_cache system as well - see the issue #3512070.
To get maximum points, you must disable the language_cookie module.
Maximum possible points
5
What is this check, and why should you care
There are 2 filesystems in Drupal - public files and private files.
Private files force Drupal to bootstrap in order to serve the file, and access control is checked every single time. This is useful for sensitive files, but a hindrance when your site is under high load.
It is recommended to use Drupal's public file system for static, non-sensitive files, and reserve the use of private files for dynamic, or sensitive files.
Maximum possible points
5
Image checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/sites/default/files/styles/introduction/public/2026-06/rhw-supplied-j-rosser-davies.jpg.webp?h=4362216e&itok=V5dwj-gQ
See the HTTP headers for this image file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
A cached response is reusable for the duration of its freshness lifetime, defined in RFC 9111 §4.2. The freshness lifetime is taken from Cache-Control: s-maxage or max-age (§5.2), and falls back to the Expires header (§5.3) or a heuristic if neither is set. The longer the freshness lifetime, the higher the cache hit ratio at any given traffic level.
To get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
The current cache lifetime is 2764800 seconds (1 month and 4 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
An ETag is an opaque identifier for a specific version of a resource, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.3. When a client revisits a URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-None-Match request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.2); if the server still considers the response current it returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
No ETag header was found in the response, however a Last-Modified header is present. ETag and Last-Modified are independent validators — either one is sufficient for conditional requests. No penalty is applied.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
The Last-Modified response header carries the date the resource was last changed, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.2. When a client revisits the URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-Modified-Since request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.3); if the resource has not changed the server returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
CSS checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/sites/default/files/css/css_0_z4mXGCArKN2fChqv28Ow9Mafw9lb5dhlizGC2X7jM.css?delta=0&language=en&theme=ctec&include=eJxlilEKAyEMBS9k9UgS1-gK0UgS2-7tu3Shhfbn8WaYhGYoEZ-TFXMsjU7UUHGgALnEbGoCMyYQaRwKS_-3lTgB3dQOaqO6zXALn-jCwsP0uj_1BIF6druGLGsC-a_xa8yVqOmO2emhhj0kUHT3hg8N7_Wd8yJ8AckOT6U
See the HTTP headers for this CSS file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
A cached response is reusable for the duration of its freshness lifetime, defined in RFC 9111 §4.2. The freshness lifetime is taken from Cache-Control: s-maxage or max-age (§5.2), and falls back to the Expires header (§5.3) or a heuristic if neither is set. The longer the freshness lifetime, the higher the cache hit ratio at any given traffic level.
To get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
The current cache lifetime is 2628010 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
An ETag is an opaque identifier for a specific version of a resource, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.3. When a client revisits a URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-None-Match request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.2); if the server still considers the response current it returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of W/"6a14cb11-bbe" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
The Last-Modified response header carries the date the resource was last changed, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.2. When a client revisits the URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-Modified-Since request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.3); if the resource has not changed the server returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
HTTP compression reduces the size of a response body by eliminating redundancy. The client advertises supported algorithms in the Accept-Encoding request header, and the server reports which one it used in the Content-Encoding response header — both are defined in RFC 9110 §8.4.
The four common encodings each have their own specification: gzip (RFC 1952), deflate (RFC 1951), br / Brotli (RFC 7932), and zstd / Zstandard (RFC 8878). Smaller responses load faster and use less bandwidth, which especially matters on mobile networks.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
2
JavaScript checks
Performed on the asset: https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/sites/default/files/js/js_H9BxeXqgL6fSwelFh69D9UP--1EqURhHGYdMcaYh_Qw.js?scope=footer&delta=0&language=en&theme=ctec&include=eJxtzFEKQjEMRNENtXZJJekbSzFNShpBd-8TQRD8mwPDZUTAKx7LNo56HXJyl4MCa7TbuRP_v3QonCSxWexwWpXJfVjpYkySdzxlaE_NHKXZXKbQ2JcWaDlP6L1OGpreLt_Ih7-JFyQkQMU
See the HTTP headers for this JavaScript file.
What is this check, and why should you care
Having a cache hit ensures the fastest possible delivery of content to end users.
The response header X-Cache had a value of HIT.
Fastly has documentation on how to interpret the X-Cache header.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
A cached response is reusable for the duration of its freshness lifetime, defined in RFC 9111 §4.2. The freshness lifetime is taken from Cache-Control: s-maxage or max-age (§5.2), and falls back to the Expires header (§5.3) or a heuristic if neither is set. The longer the freshness lifetime, the higher the cache hit ratio at any given traffic level.
To get maximum points, your cache lifetime must be greater than or equal to 4 weeks. If your cache lifetime is less, then you will get some proportion of the score based on how close to 4 weeks you are.
The current cache lifetime is 2628010 seconds (1 month and 2 days).
You can read more about which headers Fastly uses to indicate the cache lifetime.
Maximum possible points
10
What is this check, and why should you care
An ETag is an opaque identifier for a specific version of a resource, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.3. When a client revisits a URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-None-Match request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.2); if the server still considers the response current it returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-None-Match with a value of W/"6a170cdc-4f2a" was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
The Last-Modified response header carries the date the resource was last changed, defined in RFC 9110 §8.8.2. When a client revisits the URL it can send the previously-seen value back in an If-Modified-Since request header (RFC 9110 §13.1.3); if the resource has not changed the server returns an empty 304 Not Modified instead of the full body, saving bandwidth and origin work.
An HTTP request with the request header If-Modified-Since with a value of was sent, and an HTTP 304 was responded with.
Maximum possible points
3
What is this check, and why should you care
HTTP compression reduces the size of a response body by eliminating redundancy. The client advertises supported algorithms in the Accept-Encoding request header, and the server reports which one it used in the Content-Encoding response header — both are defined in RFC 9110 §8.4.
The four common encodings each have their own specification: gzip (RFC 1952), deflate (RFC 1951), br / Brotli (RFC 7932), and zstd / Zstandard (RFC 8878). Smaller responses load faster and use less bandwidth, which especially matters on mobile networks.
The response header Content-Encoding had a value of br.
Fastly has documentation on how to enable automatic compression.
See the Wikipedia page on HTTP compression for more background.
To get maximum points, you need to use Brotli or Zstandard compression.
Maximum possible points
2
HTTP Response headers
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Status Code | HTTP 200 |
| Accept-Ranges | bytes |
| Age | 0 |
| Cache-Control | max-age=600, public, s-maxage=2764800 |
| Connection | keep-alive |
| Content-Encoding | br |
| Content-Length | 20620 |
| Content-Type | text/html; charset=UTF-8 |
| Content-language | en |
| Date | Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:44:59 GMT |
| ETag | W/"1781052298" |
| Expires | Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT |
| Fastly-Debug-Digest | fd2f078f80cc45f23efea141aa8c1b08801f3b58bd99a395b8bd808ae7ce737c |
| Fastly-Debug-Path | (D cache-syd10127-SYD 1781052299) (F cache-syd10140-SYD 1781052299) |
| Fastly-Debug-TTL | (H cache-syd10127-SYD - - 0) |
| Fastly-Drupal-HTML | YES |
| Fastly-Drupal-VCL-Uploaded | 8-1.0.2 |
| Last-Modified | Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:44:58 GMT |
| Server-Timing | HIT-CLUSTER, fastly;desc="Edge time";dur=1 |
| Surrogate-Control | max-age=2764800 |
| Surrogate-Key | m0XO 7usv DVPI 6bQH JT14 2ctn i2+L gWXo 1luX lf13 06hH lLWn LbEP GoLM ncFP eRoF U9bK GmE5 x1c9 vdBQ IT9i BeNV 3lQE +Gw5 bguc rv1S BdLf X/uy 9nwt xh92 QUXm zvlr bxKs zayr NLdf egOC Eq2q PdRL 8kQ8 EJnh 0a7Z MBh0 ah2a 9U5D 0e7V OZj4 MxMD c8LO 9spb vfAN ZkIH du7p KacA bor7 kyx4 CYHN QXl/ d4Kl yP3X /Tf3 nNXL 4TLV Xmdv zpkk uGOA 1RIZ lsdN B0qW 813c c13H PL6k PCTn XQF+ u6c+ 7vBo GADI 60UN Zi/D fcLr VdSJ h9WH MMtG FiFX fbvF 6v9P dzSA TVd6 ltSW Mt5Q zSwi IfCk /CSK QnPa GMvl qQ8u wOQp CgLP +3st 3aDK E38d SYMk a45h Jrtk 828y DmMM cY/z VjRX C3AG 8mEe nxoU SsOR kdA9 t63q 7R+4 bU3d MwrO EnLg UsBh WHMw mMck PGuB RdXm nrP7 6tqF VDXa Xblr PByf sj7w fhJW ckgp NKAx M1/7 1adM OrkA Ea9+ fbZp b1we rtR+ ccO7 z7+O urPg 0oYP 2RBn oz95 7b2H 5PIv UiVR gayt EopW mj6k MNaY 02lw vVGb nzQs QQw3 jO0Y cuJ3 +rj1 rUC5 h6QW NKw/ YgbE LkV+ lXj/ 8t7T WY5v nTGb BipS BVXo yCe5 jL5H TT9l MfRh P8uH 6dsr 7FWQ /eg7 kFon bJbm tzmM 3NB8 bUtG tJn9 5Uio 4xoA UAFG lSMv 4JtX fDzq 0iYL qOy7 9yJi /d4a LOe/ www.ctec.uwa.edu.au |
| Vary | Cookie, Accept-Encoding |
| Via | 1.1 varnish |
| X-Cache | HIT |
| X-Cache-Hits | 1 |
| X-LAGOON | amazeeio-au2>ingress-nginx>ctec-main:nginx>nginx-7445557544-qx7t7 |
| X-Lagoon-Environment | ctec-main |
| X-Served-By | cache-syd10127-SYD |
| X-Service-Id | v7pKStTgOCcudsKeriPeF5 |
| X-Static-Asset | 0 |
| X-Timer | S1781052299.214922,VS0,VE1 |
| X-Waf-Block | 0 |
| X-Waf-Block-Id | 0 |
| fastly-request-id | 39316b1c65ea60e0d21ac2bd |
If you want to do this yourself
You can use the following cURL command:
curl -sLIXGET -H 'Fastly-Debug: 1' -H 'Accept-Encoding: br, zstd, gzip, deflate' 'https://www.ctec.uwa.edu.au/' | sort