Proxy_cache or direct static files ?

[Larry]

Hello,

I don't quite understand what I could get from caching with proxy_cache vs
serving static files directly.

Everywhere people tend to say that it is better to cache, but isn't caching
the same as serving directly from static file ?

Say that I serve home.html from a plain static html file, would I get any
benefit to use reverse proxy + cache to serve it ?

Thanks,

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,245544,245544#msg-245544