httpZip doesn compress very small or very large files by default. Why is this?
This feature (labeled Response Size Limits under the Exclusions tab), is related to the above question regarding processor utilization. There is an inevitable trade-off between compression savings and processor utilization, since the application of the compression algorithms (GZip or Deflate) to increasingly large entities does not scale in a linear fashion. In short, as one attempts to compress larger and larger files (under a given load), at some point the cost in processor utilization will overwhelm any benefit from smaller payloads. To deal with this fact, httpZip has minimum and maximum file size settings beyond which it will not attempt compression (by default 500 bytes and 1MB, respectively). Like every other parameter in httpZip, this one is configurable by the user so that it can be adjusted to their server conditions. Lowering the maximum file size will change the trade-off in the direction of lower overall compression and a reduced burden on the processor(s). Similarly, unde
