mod_deflate -- File size lower bound needed?

[Stephen Pierzchala <st...@pierzchala.com>]

All:

A question for discussion: should a lower bound be set in mod_deflate?

I just ran a test using the Linux Documentation Project files and found
that some of the files in the test group were quite small, less that 100
bytes. When mod_deflate tackled these files, I saw a file sized increase
of between 12 and 15 bytes.

Doesn't sound like a lot, until maybe you start to add up all of those
HTML error pages we all send.

I open the floor to debate. :-)

smp

Re: mod_deflate -- File size lower bound needed?

[Ian Holsman <ia...@apache.org>]

Stephen Pierzchala wrote:
> All:
> 
> A question for discussion: should a lower bound be set in mod_deflate?
> 
> I just ran a test using the Linux Documentation Project files and found
> that some of the files in the test group were quite small, less that 100
> bytes. When mod_deflate tackled these files, I saw a file sized increase
> of between 12 and 15 bytes.
> 
> Doesn't sound like a lot, until maybe you start to add up all of those
> HTML error pages we all send.
> 
> I open the floor to debate. :-)
> 
> smp
> 


while this may be easy for the cases where the filter gets passed a
content-length header, it may be harder for the ones where it doesn't
know the size of the page before it starts compressing..

I'm cool with putting in a directive, but not sure how to write the doc's up
to say that this is a 'guidance' only and that it might be ignored.

we should also put in a directive to only compress when system load is below a certain
level. (but we would need a apr_get_system_load() function first .. any volunteers? )