Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the 'Enable mod_gzip for Apache' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Enable mod_gzip for Apache
Authored by: bluehz on Jul 14, '03 10:48:22AM

I never have really understood the purpose of mod_zip compression for Apache. I mean - I am sure at one time when everyone had 14.4k modems, it had its place. But if web pages are created properly, optimized properly - I see no reason for a compression scheme for web pages that may shave a tenth or one-hundreth of a second of the download time for a page.

Maybe I am missing the whole point of mod_gzip....



[ Reply to This | # ]
Enable mod_gzip for Apache
Authored by: matsur on Jul 14, '03 11:38:00AM

One word: Bandwidth. Since HTML files are easily compressible text, size can be reduced by a factor of twenty. This does add up on a large bandwidth constrained site.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Enable mod_gzip for Apache
Authored by: cteselle on Jul 14, '03 01:26:44PM

If you are paying per GB transfered for your hosting, this can make quite a difference.



[ Reply to This | # ]
My experiences with mod_gzip were similar - easy and useful
Authored by: VHDLBigot on Jul 14, '03 04:33:53PM
I did these steps some months back as well. It is a simple module to build if you have the developer's tools installed.

Why do this? gzip can compress better than the compression built into modems. When I checked my server logs, I found that most served web pages were typically 1/3 to 1/4 of the original size. For pages that are under 10K, it's not very noticeable but most useful home pages are 25-100KB. I work hard to keep my pages small to begin with...

With a little work you could use mod gzip so that your web pages are actually stored as *.html.gz pages and have mod_gzip unzip only when necessary. *cough* Safari *cough* This could save bandwidth and processor bandwidth used to compress on the fly.

A footnote to cable modem users: a month ago my cable modem provider (the only availabe broadband in my area) decided to block port 80 so there would be no simple webserving from home. Technically running any server was a violation of the terms of service. Luckily my new web host service already has mod_gzip running. I must admit, though, it *was* fun hosting my domain from a humble iMac while it lasted... I learned a bunch about Apache, perl, web virii, etc...

---
--
Scott
BilikFamily.com

[ Reply to This | # ]