If the client has done a conditional GET and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified since the date and time specified in If-Modified-Since field, the server responds with a 304 status code and does not send the document body to the client.
Response headers are as if the client had sent a HEAD request, but limited to only those headers which make sense in this context. This means only headers that are relevant to cache managers and which may have changed independently of the document's Last-Modified date. Examples include Date , Server and Expires .
The purpose of this feature is to allow efficient updates of local cache information (including relevant metainformation) without requiring the overhead of multiple HTTP requests (e.g. a HEAD followed by a GET) and minimizing the transmittal of information already known by the requesting client (usually a caching proxy).