Replication and Activation
Replication is the mechanism AEM uses to move content from the author environment to one or more publish instances. When an author clicks "Publish" (or "Activate") in the Sites console, the underlying replication framework serializes the affected content, transports it over HTTP/HTTPS, and deserializes it on the target publish instance. Understanding this pipeline is essential for debugging publish delays, configuring Dispatcher cache invalidation, and building custom publishing workflows.