The LoadMaster data compression feature reduces the amount of data to be transferred for HTTP objects by utilizing gzip compression which is available in all modern web browsers. Leveraging Lempel-Ziv (LZ) compression and HTTP/1.1 GNU zip (gzip) content encoding reduces bandwidth utilization for high compression files such as text files (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).

Data compression allows the LoadMaster to compress the application payload per request, reducing network bandwidth consumption without degrading content quality and response time resulting in an improvement for the end-users' overall experience. Data compression is supported on all files. Compression ratios vary by file type.

Note: Compression is not recommended for files 100Mb or greater in size.

Note: The compression feature should be deployed simultaneously with the caching feature to reduce the real-time inline compression requirements. Using only compression can potentially bottleneck the Virtual Service throughput depending on the hardware platform.

Compression can be enabled per HTTP, offloaded HTTPS, and re-encrypted HTTPS Virtual Services.

Compression depends on clients having gzip support. You can verify that a compressed connection to the Virtual Service exists by tracing the client HTTP traffic. If you can locate the Content-encoding:gzip header from the LoadMaster your client communication to the LoadMaster is compressed.