Does httpZip work with caching technologies like proxy servers and content distribution networks like Akamai?
Yes, httpZip supports the use of the Vary header and will work flawlessly with standards-compliant proxy servers and CDN systems. For background, there is a built-in tension (though not an irreconcilable conflict) between the two ways of improving performance: (shared) caching and compression. Because compression requires content negotiation (that is, because the origin server has to make sure the client can decompress compressed content), a shared cache like a proxy server or edge servers used by CDNs cannot simply assume that compressed content is cacheable. A user agent or browser incapable of decompressing the resource might get the compressed version. This is no different in principle from the problems caused by dynamic content; in a shared cache’s ideal world, all resources (or all URL names) have a single representation only, and in the past, this made compression and shared caching incompatible. Fortunately, there is a mechanism in the HTTP 1.1 standard to help shared caches de
