So far I have only heard good things about mod_gzip. This free module may increase speeds by as much as 90% and in may cut bandwidth in half. I imagine that there has to be some kind of downside, or else everyone would install it as a default. Perhaps the increase in server load is a problem.

What are you feelings about mod_gzip?

Why should or should not it be installed on an Apache server?

i got mod_gzip installed on both my VO dual p3 server and my raq4 with rackshack.net speeds up my pages and cuts bandwidth on average by 25 - 33% and even up to 95%!

i had one page that was 260kb in size full of text compressed to 16kb! by mod_gzip :D

down side some servers have problems with it but from my experience i have had no problems and it's worth the effort to install just for speeding up page loading :)

The only downside that I know of is that it takes a little cpu to actually do the compression.

The upside of speed and saved transfer easily outweighs that in my book.

You can also install mgstats to get an idea of the compression you are getting.

Just remember, it can only compress the "text" part of your pages. Images are already compressed, so mod_gzip will skip those.

Frank

It is a trade off between CPU usage and bandwidth. However, for most of us bandwidth is more a concern than CPU these days.

No problems so far with mod_gzip, runs smoothly.
But this topic was discussed many times, maybe you should click on <search> :)

When I installed it on my box I noticed a significant improvement in response time. Pages seemed to snap up. I know this is subjective, but the difference seemed quite apparent.

As far us the need for CPU... who care? As was mentioned earlier by others, our main concern is bandwidth. Most servers today have CPUs with sufficient power, that the added overhead isn't even felt.

My opinion is that mod_gzip is great! I'm really glad I installed it.

I have two clients that insist on IIS for a few sites, is there an equivalent module for those poor people?

As I remember, IIS has a built in compressesion system.......

Er...where do you find mgstats?

You can get it here (http://wizard.ae.krakow.pl/~mike/mgstat/).

Frank

Hi!
We have installed mod_gzip on many servers before. It has been great.
I have never seen any problems with it.
Highly recommended.

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

Make sure your mod_gzip writes temp files to a folder on a partition big enough to handle your level of traffic. Putting it on a very small partition if it fills up, can cause major problems.

-Brendan

Setting a cron deleting these temp files also helps a lot

mod_gzip... really cool add-on to have for Apache, saves a LOT of bandwidth, which is everyone's ultimate goal to do :) .

Alan

Originally posted by ho247
mod_gzip... really cool add-on to have for Apache, saves a LOT of bandwidth, which is everyone's ultimate goal to do :) .

Alan

Are there any other cool add-on tools that you think are useful for apache?

Originally posted by ClusterMania


Are there any other cool add-on tools that you think are useful for apache?

Take a look at http://modules.apache.org/

Not that I know of, mod_gzip was installed by Rackspace automatically for me, but Ive previously installed it myself on another server. There isn't any other add-ons that I'll recommend... nothign that comes to mind anyway.

Alan

Want to also add...

There probably are other cool add-ons, but installing all of them would just slow down Apache, so it might not be worth it... it depends *how* cool it is, LOL.

Alan

I agree. I think if RackSpace installs it as default, that must be a cool and must-have module.

I haven't installed mod_gzip yet but after following this thread, I'm pretty convinced and gotta install it soon.

Happy New Year everyone!