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: Compression only happens once - if the server already compressed the response, the LoadMaster will not compress it again.

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.