[e2e] Compression of web pages

[Marcel Waldvogel]

Woojune Kim wrote:

>I've tried this out on a couple of websites but even though I'm sending accept-encoding gzip, they never seem to send gzipped files back... (Of course some sites do..)
>

Two points to start:

* No major web server has on-the-fly compression enabled as shipped, 
AFAIK. With the amount of RTFM- and clue-challenged IT people out there, 
this alone should be a good reason for it to be seldomly activated.

* Most large web sites generate at least a small part of the web page 
(semi-)dynamically. Therefore, compression would require more CPU 
processing.

Preposterously assuming now that at least some administrators of large 
web sites know what they are doing, we have to conclude that compressing 
on-the-fly does not provide any benefits, at least according to their 
metrics.

My speculation comes to the following possible reasons (in decreasing 
order of significance):

* Text (=compressible) portions are small compared to incompressible 
data (images, media, binaries, ...)

* CPU overhead must be more critical than bandwidth overhead

* Administrative overhead


-Marcel