Signs it is time to revisit response compression

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. A few signals that response compression is due some attention.

Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Text compresses dramatically and costs almost nothing to enable
• Modern algorithms beat older ones by a useful margin

The practical version

Already-compressed formats gain nothing from it. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

How to tell if yours is fine

Real-world numbers from actual visitors matter more than a score produced on a fast laptop. Three things worth confirming about response compression before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Text compresses dramatically and costs almost nothing to enable — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.