Gzipped web server?

[yanksfan]

Did you guys think of setting up a gzippped web server for AO? I know that it costs more in CPU usage, but better to buy a faster cpu once than pay more in bandwidth costs every month

Just a thought..

[cgkanchi]

What is a gzipped web server. This is the first I'm hearing of something like this. I'd be very grateful if you'd elaborate .

Cheers,
cgkanchi

[yanksfan]

Sorry about that. I didn't really mean gzipped web server, I really meant a web server capable of compressing pages with gzip.

By no means am I an expert on this subject, but basically if a client tells the server it can accept a gzipped-compressed file, and the server supports it, the server will compress the file on the fly, send it, and the client will decompress it on the fly. This sort of compression has a big impact on the server's CPU, but it does reduce the bandwith usage.

It can't compress images, but it can compress anything with a text/* MIME type. This includes html files, and dynamic output from server scripts (CGI, PHP, etc).

I noticed that antionline's web servers do not support this, so I figured I would mention it. Also, most of the newer browsers support gzip compression. Most web servers also support this, including the most-popular Apache webserver.

[SDK]

I think Jup has a lot of other thing to do before that.. (In my view).

[JP]

Greetings:

As with most sites, the bandwidth factor to the client really isn't the text being delivered, but the rich media elements (graphics, binaries, etc.) The benefits of compressing the text of the pages on AntiOnline would be minimal.

In reality, adding gzip compression to the pages would slow things down for the client. Why?

Because the amount of time it takes for the server to compress the page after it's dynamically created, and the time that your client would take to decompress the page after it's been downloaded, would far surpass the time saved in the transaction by the minimally smaller compressed download in the first place.

(Wow, that was cool. The first run-on sentence that I've posted to AntiOnline in months!)

More often than not, hosts that use gzip compression are doing so to save on bandwidth expense, not to make things faster for the client. Bandwidth is dirt cheap anymore, especially when you're buying it in mass bulk like i'm sure Jupiter Media does. IMHO, gzip compressed pages is something that never really caught on, and never really will.