Comments on: Boost Your Web site Performance

By: Mikhailov Anatoly

Mikhailov Anatoly — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:17:29 +0000

Mod_deflate in apache2 is pretty much the same as mod_gzip in apache1.3, and mod_deflate is included with the apache2 source package. Both modules allow compressing of the apache server on the fly

http://railsgeek.com/2008/12/16/apache2-httpd-improving-performance-mod_deflate-gzip

By: zuborg

zuborg — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:56:20 +0000

I would also recommend to use this online free performance testing tool – http://Site-Perf.com/

It measure loading speed of page and it’s requisites (images/js/css) like browsers do and shows nice detailed chart – so you can easily spot bottlenecks. It’s very detailed and accurate, supports a lot of features like Keep-Alive and HTTP-compression.

Also useful feature is that this tool can measure quality of internet link of your server.

By: Klaus

Klaus — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:11:10 +0000

Mike: thanks very much for clarification, I really got confused by that whole ETags issue…

PS: That’s why I love working for Yahoo!: brilliant and bright people (who even visit my blog)

By: Mike West

Mike West — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 19:28:30 +0000

Jeff’s advice about ETags is, in my opinion, poorly expressed with double or triple negatives confusing the issue. He says “So unless you run a server farm, you should ignore this guidance.” What he _means_ is “Klaus, you only have a single server: use ETags.” In fact, they really _only_ work (on Apache and IIS) in your specific circumstance.

ETags are a problem at Yahoo! because each page is served from a multitude of servers. Because of the way an ETag is generated, it contains a machine-specific identifier (the inode of the file on the disk for Apache, or the configuration change number for IIS); the ETag for resource X on server 1 is different from the tag for that same resource on server 2. This equals massive fail.

Your case is different: you only have one server, and the ETag for a specific resource will always remain the same. If you turn on ETags, therefore, you’ll trade in at least a few heavy `200 OK` responses for lightweight `304 Not Modified` responses. You’ll be happier, your server will be happier, and life in general will be better.