General Discussion - WOW, the new GZIP feature in great.

Author

WOW, the new GZIP feature in great.

Webmaster

2001-04-12, 9:04 pm

I wonder if anyone has noticed any speed increase or noticed any bugs with our forum.

I just installed the new module on the server that zips the pages before sending them to the HTTP1.1 complient browsers.

If you are using IE5 or above (I am not sure about versions prior to IE5) your browser is capable of receiving compressed HTML pages in GZIP format and automatically uncompress and render pages. This saves a lot of bandwodth and speeds up the page loads. Most of us have fast computers these days, so the extra time is takes to uncomress the small file is not even noticable, but the faster transfer is noticable. HTML Pages are compressed up to 4-5 times!

I noticed a big speed improvement. The forum home page now takes only under 20K to load, while before it used to take over 80K

The little extra load on the server is not noticable right now.

I wonder if anyone have started experiencing problems with this new compressed format.

Honestly I did not know that this was even possible. I just found out today and went ahead and installed this new module on the server. I only configured it to work with the forum pages for now, I will monitor the server load and if it proves to be a good thing, I will add this feature to our home page and later to other pages. By the way I tried it on the home page and it only took under 10K to load, while uncompressed home page is 45.6K

This will save alot of valuable bandwidth and even on the fast connection I notice the significant speend improvement. I tried over the modem and also see some improvement.

Remember this works only with browsers that support GZIP output.

I have not yet tried with Netscape, but then againg I decided not to support Netscape browsers in the future when I redesign the site, but that's another story.

Webmaster

2001-04-12, 9:32 pm

If you want to use this feature you must be sure your browser is set to HTTP 1.1

If you using Internet Explorer, click on tools, Internet options...(at the bottom of the drop-down list), click on advanced tab, scroll down to HTTP 1.1 settings and make sure that the "Use HTTP 1.1" box is checked.

Close and re-start the browser if you made any changes. You are now able to use this new compression feature.

imran1430

2001-04-12, 11:16 pm

I can even notice the difference on my cable connection, KOOL!

You are an awesome guy! Our webmaster at work is also really really smart, I wonder if all WMs are as good as you guys

Keep up the good work! This place keeps on getting better and better!

Randy

2001-04-13, 12:56 pm

Yes, I have noticed it is much faster. I also note than when using Netscrap at this site, my browser tends to crash a lot, at least my Windows version. They really need to do something to improve that browser. Seems to work OK in Opera as well.

ccieToBe

2001-04-13, 10:12 pm

Good job Webmaster, I noticed a major difference and wondered what it was til I saw this post. I'm surprised more sites don't use this.

Which distro of Linux is the webserver running?

carlitos

2001-04-13, 10:34 pm

good job guys
i love it

Webmaster

2001-04-24, 10:33 am

In case you have not notices I have added the GZIP feature to the entire site. I also switched to a different module to compress the pages and I think it's better now.

For example the home page now takes only under 10K to load where it used to take 46K before.

Now even with the 28.8 modem our site is accessed at speeds comparable to an ISDN line.

For cable modems and DSL lines some pages open almost instantly now.

Save the bandwidth - our most valuable resource.

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