Nobody has mentioned the latency issue when gzipping. If you have to construct the whole file before gzipping, in situations where the file is large or dribbles out as the server processes the data, this could mean a significant slowdown.
In virtually all situations, I agree gzipping is good, just like I always leave write-caching on my hard drive turned on so that the slowest part of my system can run at the fastest possible speed. There just might be consequences you do not intend.
To address the obvious replies: yes, your server should not dribble out content. And, yes, if you are using a framework that spits out the entire page at once already, you will incur no additional latency on top of the gzip/gunzip time.
Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
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Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#42His speed estimates are wrong, as he should have tested gzipping many small files instead of gzipping one large file. There is a significant difference.
Have you actually made any measurements?
Smaller pages are actually faster (both individually and collectively), though gzip is already fast enough that the difference is irrelevant.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#43Mibbit uses a custom webserver... Instead of gzipping things on the fly, I decided to just look for a .gz version on the filesystem, and use that if it's there. eg a request for 'index.html' looks for 'index.html' and 'index.html.gz'. If the gz is there it uses that and sets headers accordingly. Works incredibly well, and the deploy scripts just gzip things when they're pushed out to production.
Out of curiosity what was the reason for using a custom webserver?
Scalability, full control over everything, it's not rocket science...
Mibbit uses some cool Comet like stuff, and I'm 99% confident the Mibbit webserver is better than anything else at doing this.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: are you on drugs, or not a native English speaker?
Coffee. I know English well enough to understand the term "ad hominem."
Heh, sorry, I didn't mean offense - I just found your train of thought a little opaque, but certainly in an interesting way!
Either way, I don't think knowing to GZip your pages counts as "education" any more than knowing how to put a horse shoe on a hoof or how to facilitate a corporate merger does.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#45a2enmod deflate /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Thanks. For some reason, this critical bit of information was missing from the AppJet app, the article, and the comments. I had to spend some of my time actually looking for it.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#46Nobody has mentioned the latency issue when gzipping. If you have to construct the whole file before gzipping, in situations where the file is large or dribbles out as the server processes the data, this could mean a significant slowdown. In virtually all situations, I agree gzipping is good, just like I always leave write-caching on my hard drive turned on so that the slowest part of my system can run at the fastest…
For large static files you can cache pre-gzipped versions and use content negotiation to serve it to clients that support gzip.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#47a2enmod deflate /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
I don't use apache, but apparently it may be a little more complicated than that if you really want it to work: http://www.nerdblog.com/2009/04/my-modgzip-settings-deflatec...
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#48a2enmod deflate /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Wow, thanks! For fifteen minutes I've been scratching my head after I read all the docs on deflate. Nowhere was that command mentioned and when I saw your comment I had an "Of course!" moment. Thanks for that.
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#49Nobody has mentioned the latency issue when gzipping. If you have to construct the whole file before gzipping, in situations where the file is large or dribbles out as the server processes the data, this could mean a significant slowdown. In virtually all situations, I agree gzipping is good, just like I always leave write-caching on my hard drive turned on so that the slowest part of my system can run at the fastest…
Incorrect. Gzip streams just fine, so there is no latency issue. Google search, for example, writes the top of the page before the search is complete. (and I assure you, they use gzip)
Re: Paul Buchheit: Make your site faster and cheaper to operate in one easy step
#50Nobody has mentioned the latency issue when gzipping. If you have to construct the whole file before gzipping, in situations where the file is large or dribbles out as the server processes the data, this could mean a significant slowdown. In virtually all situations, I agree gzipping is good, just like I always leave write-caching on my hard drive turned on so that the slowest part of my system can run at the fastest…
Incorrect. Gzip streams just fine, so there is no latency issue. Google search, for example, writes the top of the page before the search is complete. (and I assure you, they use gzip)
Thanks for saying that - I was gonna pipe up but wasn't sure if it was public information. :-)