15/07/2026
Most developers know that enabling ππ³π’π© makes websites faster.
But have you ever stopped to ask π°π‘π²?
Open Chrome DevTools and you'll often see something like this:
ππ’π³π: πππ ππ
ππ«ππ§π¬πππ«π«ππ: ππ ππ
The browser still receives the complete page, so where did the other ππ ππ go?
The answer lies in ππππ ππ¨π¦π©π«ππ¬π¬π’π¨π§.
When a browser sends a request, it tells the server which compression algorithms it supports using the πππππ©π-ππ§ππ¨ππ’π§π header. The server chooses the best algorithm (such as Gzip, Brotli, or Zstandard), compresses the response, and sends it back with a ππ¨π§πππ§π-ππ§ππ¨ππ’π§π header. The browser then decompresses it automatically before rendering the page.
It's one of those pieces of infrastructure that users never noticeβbut it saves bandwidth, improves page load times, and powers almost every modern website.
In this article, I dive into:
β’ How HTTP compression works step by step
β’ Browser and server negotiation (πππππ©π-ππ§ππ¨ππ’π§π )
β’ Where compression actually happens in production
β’ Gzip vs Brotli vs Zstandard
β’ Why text compresses so well but images don't
β’ CPU vs bandwidth trade-offs
β’ CDN caching and the importance of πππ«π²: πππππ©π-ππ§ππ¨ππ’π§π
β’ Common production mistakes, double compression, and the BREACH security attack
If you're interested in backend engineering, networking, or understanding how the web really works, I think you'll enjoy this deep dive.
π Read the full article:
https://medium.com/gitconnected/how-gzip-makes-the-web-feel-faster-inside-http-compression-9d6ac6dbccc5
What other HTTP or backend topics would you like me to explore next?
Last week I was debugging a slow API and, out of habit, popped open Chrome DevTools and clicked the Network tab. Size and Transferred showβ¦
