HTTP Compression Tools

[PetrolTed]

Any experts out there.

I have an increasingly expensive data transfer bill to pay and I also have a company flogging a compression tool on my case.

IIS5 seems to support compression. Is this worth turning on or does it cause more problems that it's worth?

Can anyone recommend any compression tools that they've installed on their servers?

[CarZee]

perhaps if you used a smaller font?

[GregE240]

Ted,

Can't comment on 3rd party tools - never used any.

However, be warned that in using IIS compression, you introduce an additional overhead on the server - do you want that?

Also I've heard some stories that certain clients (and I include flavours of IE5 in that) can't read parts of webpages with compression enabled within IIS.

You've been warned, mate.

Give us the name of the 3rd party tool and I'll ask some of my esteemed colleagues (post it here or mail it to me)

Greg

[PetrolTed]

Yep, IIS compression seems like a poor option from what I've read.

I've got spare CPU capacity currently so am interested in reducing bandwidth costs which are spiralling.

The couple I've identified so far are:

www.port80software.com/products/httpZip
www.preactholdings.com/performance/products/jetnexus/jet-nexus/

[GregE240]

OK, business hat on:

Why not contact both companies and ask for some ROI figures?

Additionally, some case studies of some of their customers wouldn't be a bad idea.

EDIT - Jetnexus seems the more expensive product than httpzip (like ten times as much), but they have case studies and ROI to back up their claims.

Given the cost of httpzip, might be worth a dose of trialware and see how you get on. At 299 bucks if it makes a difference, you'll see your money back in no time.

>> Edited by GregE240 on Monday 3rd March 11:56

[GreenV8S]

Anything that reduces my phone bills has got to be a good thing. On my PC I don't seem to be getting much/any client-side caching (of pages, graphics, adverts etc), although I haven't knowingly done anything to inhibit it. I haven't investigated why this is.

Have you considered more drastic measures like splitting threads into separate documents, so avoiding the need to download the whole thing every time a new post is added?

Cheers,
Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)
(and a day job writing network performance management software )

[PetrolTed]

I don't want to compromise the look and function of the site, just ensure that it's being piped out as efficiently as possible and more importantly keep my overheads down.

[miniman]

Just out of interest, how much data are you transferring per month???

Edited to say: Wahey! 500 posts!

>> Edited by miniman on Monday 3rd March 12:46

[Bonce]

Why not treat the cause, not the symptom: ban Carzee!

[PetrolTed]

It's looking like being 250GB this month

[miniman]

PetrolTed said: It's looking like being 250GB this month

[Size Nine Elm]

Just a thought - you could cut down on the data transfer size by generating smaller pages...

The gassing station seems to output a literal style section on every page which could go into a stylesheet.

Lots of absolute links referring to
h t t p:// w w w.pistonheads.com/...

You could make them relative, e.g. href="/banners/redirect.asp"

Lots of bits of Javascrpt in fragments could be collected into .js files and cached.

Overall - maybe 5k per page view saving - which adds up to a lot.

Who needs compression...

[PetrolTed]

Yep, you're right. There's certainly scope in each page for optimisation.

[Deester]

PetrolTed said: Yep, you're right. There's certainly scope in each page for optimisation.

Optimisation yes, but 250GB (faint), it wont be easy to take a chunk off that figure by simple page optimisation. But every little helps.

I have never used HTTP compression, sounds like a gimmic.

[sadoksevoli]

OK this is a shot in the dark - how much of the 250GB is possibly down to the gassing station? Wouldn't it help to run a mirror of the gassing station off a news server - ok you may lose some advertising space but there would probably still be nquite a few people using the http version - but die-hard gassers could use Outlook Express or equivalent - thence all those pages for posting, the acknowledgemnt etc would never have to be served.

[PetrolTed]

Like I say, I'm not going to complicate or compromise the output of the forums as they work extremely well in their current guise.

I'm just looking for means of improving the efficiency of my business. The bandwidth costs are affordable as long I maintain the advertiser revenues to cover the costs.

If there's a quick, efficient and safe means of compressing my data then I'd be foolish not to investigate it.

[Size Nine Elm]

Deester said:

Optimisation yes, but 250GB (faint), it wont be easy to take a chunk off that figure by simple page optimisation. But every little helps.

For example - this page comes in at about 22k. Knock 5k off per page and your site traffic is down by 25% - worth doing, I'd have thought.

[woof]

Hi Ted

we use "mod_gzip" to compress html and CGI pages which the browser then
unzips.

It's a Unix Apache Ap that runs on our server, by compressing the file size the site speeds up and cut's down on bandwidth etc ...

Here's a reference from the makers of ..
nto sure if that the right link but this one works
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-gzip/

www.remotecommunications.com/apache/mod_gzip/
They may be a NT version (shame on you for using it inthe first place !!)


>> Edited by woof on Monday 3rd March 15:40

[kevinday]

Just a thought from a techno-dunce, why not reduce the number of replies a page to say 15, thus cutting 25% off each page?

[GregE240]

PetrolTed said: Like I say, I'm not going to complicate or compromise the output of the forums as they work extremely well in their current guise.

I'm just looking for means of improving the efficiency of my business. The bandwidth costs are affordable as long I maintain the advertiser revenues to cover the costs.

If there's a quick, efficient and safe means of compressing my data then I'd be foolish not to investigate it.

Then for a little under 200 nicker then I'd say httpzip is worth a shot? Particularly when there's a trialware version available. Not sure if its full function trial though.