Dispatcher on author instance and not on publisher

[abrathee]

Hello,

Although the recommended approach is to setup the dispatcher on publish instance, I wanted to know if I try to setup a dispatcher on author instance and not on publisher. What are the pros and cons of this approach?

Thank you!

[BrianKasingli]

Pros:

• Faster content delivery: The dispatcher can cache frequently accessed content and serve it directly from the cache, which can significantly reduce the time it takes for end-users to access your website or application. This can lead to a better user experience and increased engagement.

• Improved scalability: By offloading content delivery to the dispatcher, you can reduce the load on your authoring environment and ensure that your application can handle high levels of traffic. This can improve the overall reliability and availability of your website or application.

• Better security: The dispatcher can act as a front-end proxy server and filter out malicious requests, which can help protect your website or application from attacks such as DDoS or SQL injection.

• Reduced server costs: By caching and serving content from the dispatcher, you can reduce the load on your server infrastructure, which can help lower your overall server costs.

• Improved performance testing: With a dispatcher in place, you can more accurately test the performance of your website or application in a production-like environment, which can help identify and address any issues before they impact end-users.

Cons:

• Increased complexity: Adding a dispatcher to your AEM authoring environment adds an extra layer of complexity to your infrastructure, which can make it more difficult to manage and maintain. This can require additional expertise and resources to configure and troubleshoot.

• Higher infrastructure costs: Setting up a dispatcher requires additional infrastructure, such as servers and network resources, which can increase your overall infrastructure costs.

• Limited caching capabilities: Unlike a dispatcher on a publisher, a dispatcher on an author cannot cache all content. Some pages and assets may not be cached, which can result in slower performance for end-users.

• Potential content inconsistency: If caching is not properly configured, end-users may see outdated or inconsistent content. This can be a particular concern if you are making frequent updates to your content.

• Limited benefits: Depending on your specific use case and traffic patterns, the benefits of adding a dispatcher to your authoring environment may be limited. It is important to carefully evaluate your needs before making a decision.

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[abrathee]

Thank you for addressing the question and elaborating the pros and cons in a detailed way!

I believe that below pros are irrespective of whether the dispatcher is working on author or publish env- 

Faster content delivery, Better security, Reduced server costs, Improved performance testing

Are there any specific advantages with regards to when a dispatcher is used directly in front of an author instance and not on the publisher. 

I was going through the documentation and its mentioned that-

'A Dispatcher can be used in front of an author instance to improve authoring performance.

Dispatcher can also be used to increase the responsiveness of your author instance, particularly if you have a large number users editing and updating your website.'

Could you please help me understand how dispatcher helps in increasing the responsiveness and improving the authoring performance in this case?

Thank you!

[DPrakashRaj]

Content to end user will be served from publisher so caching is required otherwise your publisher will always be flooded with the request. So eventually you will require the dispatcher irrespective of having it on author. 
apart from caching the content it provides other features like filter which will prevent request to go to publisher and eventually helps in you implementing the security feature for your website and servers.

[Jörg_Hoh · Accepted solution]

You can use a dispatcher in front of author, but of course its benefits are limited:
* Caching is hardly possible, as content is constantly on flux; the risk of missing a cache flush and presenting old stuff is too high on author.

* But you can use the dispatcher to provide extended caching headers to some semi-static content (like product Javascript/CSS files).

in AEM CS no dispatcher is used in front of the AEM author, the benefits are too limited.

[abrathee]

Thank you @Jörg_Hoh!