---
title: Core concepts
summary: >-
  Start with the basics and learn how Fastly lets you take advantage of the
  modern internet.
url: https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts
---

- [Caching content with Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/cache/)
- [Delivering compressed content through Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/compression/)
- [Fastly-generated errors](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/errors/)
- [Health checks](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/healthcheck/)
- [IP-based geolocation and intelligence](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/geolocation/)
- [Load balancing](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/load-balancing/)
- [Rate limiting](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/rate-limiting/)
- [Real time push messaging](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/real-time-messaging/)
- [Redundancy and failover](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/failover/)
- [Routing traffic to Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/routing-traffic-to-fastly/)
- [Selecting a service type](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/services/) - Explore the concept of Fastly services and the differences between VCL-powered CDN services and WebAssembly-powered Compute services.
- [Shielding](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/concepts/shielding/)