Re: [squid-users] Is there a way to force Encoding?

28-Mar-02 at 21:17, nick (trykde@rogers.com) wrote :
> I'm not sure if this feature has been implemented or not:
>
> What I mean is that if user-agent is capable of "Accept-Encoding" and
> the upstream http server doesn't use encoding, can squid be configured
> to gzip the content and send it back to user-agent with a
> "Content-Encoded" header? It can save quite some bandwidth as well as
> some disk space, althought the latter is not our major concern.

This will only save bandwidth from the proxy to the client. Usually the
bandwidth saving is more important between the proxy and the net, rather
than the other way around. Agreed, nonetheless, that it will save
bandwidth from proxy to client, although this link is usually cheaper than
the other part...

> Sure this behavior may violate HTTP spec, and consume more CPU time for
> the first download, but it seems to be useful...

Yes, it's useful, but putting extra load on a high traffic Squid,
particularly where large files would benefit most from this, causing
memory to be used up and probably forcing swapping if Squid is loaded,
means... the disadvantages might start to outweigh the benefits. If online
time, rather than bandwidth, is at a premium, then slowing down Squid's
responsiveness will cancel out any gain in transfer once the gzipping is
done.

> Also, it makes sense to distinguish between static and dynamic content.
> It obviously works better with static ones.

If only dynamic content developers stuck to the standards, then this one
would be easy *sigh*.

Simon.

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