On a low bandwidth, high latency network connection (like the one at the conference here in Bangalore), it's readily apparently that my blog would load way faster it the content was compressed.

Mental note: Install mod_gzip on web server soon. Very soon.

To those of you who read my web site from half way around the world on a regular basis: why didn't anyone point this out sooner? Seriously. It's a simple thing I can do to make your life a tiny bit better.

Posted by jzawodn at December 03, 2003 02:51 AM

Reader Comments
# Brad Fitzpatrick said:

mod_gzip's a big hack in Apache 1.3. But I guess it'll work on your static content.

Apache 2.0's layered I/O is much nicer.

on December 3, 2003 03:48 AM
# Sérgio Carvalho said:

I vouch for Apache 2 also. mod_deflate comes with the distribution, and plays well with other apache modules.

on December 3, 2003 07:19 AM
# deflate said:

deflate is da bomb.

on December 3, 2003 07:52 AM
# Michael J. Radwin said:

If you want to stick with Apache/1.3, I wouldn't recommend mod_gzip. It uses a tmpfile instead of doing on-the-fly compression, and it has a very unfriendly license.

Instead, take a look at mod_deflate-1.0.19 for Apache/1.3.x:

http://sysoev.ru/mod_deflate/

Yes, there really is a version of mod_deflate that doesn't require Apache/2.0. It does, however, require that you use Babelfish to translate the Russian documentation into English. :-)

on December 3, 2003 11:24 AM
# Rich Manalang said:

Well... it looks like you site is PHP based (at least by looking at the HTTP headers it's producing). I'm sure you know this, with PHP, you can use the ob_gzhandler function to get the same effect. I just turned this on on my site and it works great. Dropped my front page's size from ~30kb to ~7kb.

Here's an entry I wrote up about it.

http://www.manalang.com/archives/2003/12/03/this_site_is_now_compressed.php

on December 3, 2003 12:18 PM
# Larry said:

Geez, mysql, apache 1.3, mod_gzip. How does anybody take you seriously? Postgres, httpd 2.x, mod_deflate are *much* better.

on December 3, 2003 01:00 PM
# kasia said:

Hey Larry, do you have a brother named Danny?

on December 3, 2003 01:22 PM
# Larry said:

Why?

on December 3, 2003 06:11 PM
# Travis said:

It would be more interesting if Larry had two brothers named Darrell...

"Hi. I'm Larry. This is my brother, Darrell, and this is my other brother, Darrell..."

on December 3, 2003 06:58 PM
# Peter Grigor said:

Geez, mention it?

I thought for sure you'd have it enabled already... ;)

on December 3, 2003 07:48 PM
# kasia said:

Jeremy should have gotten the reference Larry, don't worry about it :)

on December 3, 2003 08:12 PM
# BOK said:

Well... asking for suggestions?

($:~)-> chkwww -c -t1 http://jeremy.zawodny.com/
IP address: 157.134.160.101
Hostname: jeremy.zawodny.com
Official hostname: family.zawodny.com
Server can resume: Yes
Server running: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.2.2

Why not update/grade your WHOLE Apache straight away?! ;-)

on December 5, 2003 05:08 PM
# Jeremy Zawodny said:

Keep an eye on port 8080. That's where the new one is slowly coming on-line.

on December 5, 2003 05:53 PM
# Philip said:

No problem accessing your blog from here. Was prolly just the b/w at the conference.

on December 8, 2003 01:34 AM
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