Data compression is a broad topic, and we can't hope to cover it all. Here, we will learn about lossless compression and how to use it in HTTP. We will also cover lossy image compression of pictures later in the chapter. Compression is important because if we can make files smaller, we can shorten the time that it takes to transfer them over a network.
You may have noticed HTTP headers from some of the previous screenshots were related to encoding. The most common compression algorithms for HTTP are GZIP and DEFLATE, which are very similar. These are both related to the algorithm used in ZIP files. If you do not already use HTTP compression, then this is a quick win, and it will improve the performance of your site if you enable it.
There are many other more advanced compression algorithms, such as xz, which is similar to the 7-Zip (7z) format and uses the Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm(LZMA/LZMA2). However, there are currently only two additional...