Hello,

So Apache can decompress gzip'ed HTML and other files as they're requested. What in the world might be the advantage of this? To save a little bit of hard drive space by compressing, you put so much extra load on the server, don't you? (Because it would have to decompress the file each time before serving it to the client.)

If what I said it correct, then doing so makes no sense because hard drive space can always be added easily and relatively cheaply, while CPU capacity is a more valuable and constrained resource, isn't it?

Thanks.

Are you talking about mod_deflate or mod_gzip for apache?

I think what you are referring to is apache's ability to gzip files on the fly and send it to the browser. That means the whole file is stored on the hard drive. But when it's requested, it's compressed and send to a client (that is, if they support it). This is done to save bandwidth. A lot of bandwidth actually, but at the same time sacrificing cpu and memory load on the server, like you said.

I run a couple of websites out of my own house on a DSL line, which has a very limited upload speed - 300 kilobits. But, by setting up mod_deflate in apache, it makes the website (and server) seem super fast, because it uses less bandwidth.

Thanks for the response. Wow, actually, I didn't know Apache could do what you described, but that's pretty cool!

What I was referring to was the opposite, where it would be stored on the server as, not the regular file, but a gzip file, like index.html.gz

Then when index.html is requested, Apache (after configuring the directives to do so) decompresses index.html.gz and sends it index.html.

This wouldn't decrease bandwidth usage, but it would increase server load and (looks like) for the sole purpose of saving some hard drive space.

What do you think about this, and is there a sensible reason to do this?

No, I haven't heard of that before. Where did you read that, I'm curious?

I can't think of any advantage of doing something like that, besides saving disk space. But like you said that would be a horrible waste of cpu and memory usage.

Haha, this is the second post today where I got some info off Rute and people have said they have no idea what I'm talking about

If I read any more Rute, I think people are gonna laugh me right off this site, haha! Anyways, here's the URL:

http://web.whittier.edu/jlutgen/rute...00000000000000

I'm hoping you could take a look at it and let me know if it does what I explained it as being able to do, or whether I horribly misinterpreted it?

Thanks! (Hope you learned something new cuz of me, seeing as how so many people on this site have taught me stuff! )