4

I made some changes to the web.config of a server running IIS 7.5 improve the performance (mostly front-end).

A 3rd party testing tool says the site is running "PHP/5.3.10, ASP.NET" and if memory serves, it is ASP.NET 4.5

I think it's due to the odd mix of technologies (e.g. running PHP on IIS) but touching anything makes me nervous.

I added (only) the directives for expires headers and gzip from the H5BP IIS server config

I think I added those directives on the afternoon of Jan. 15th 2013. The test history of the site from the Pingdom performance testing tool is available here.

You can see where the transfer size sharply drops off (click on the history tab).

Since then it seems like every time I test it, different files (generally assets like CSS & JS) are or aren't served with gzip with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes everything seems to be served with gzip, sometimes almost nothing seems to be served compressed but it's usually somewhere in the middle (as you can see in the history).

What is going on?

How can I fix it?

This site is not under active development, while some extra data has been added to the page (Google Analytics plugin scripts I added to improve tracking) after the 15th, there is nothing that should explain such large variations and inconsistencies.

My best guess is that it is related to CPU resources for compression, and this question seems close: Why is gzip compression varying in efficiency in IIS?

Improve this question
1
  • I have just observed the same behaviour. Sometimes static assets are gzipped, sometimes they are not. I am pretty sure it's related to server CPU as you have indicated above. Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 2:49

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7

I found a likely culprit in the comments of this page; weblog.west-wind.com

Essentially, OOTB, IIS will only gzip if the file is requested at least twice in 10 seconds.

This is tuned via in web.config - unfortunately that's locked by default so you have to edit applicationhost.config to change the overrideModeDefault="DENY" to ALLOW.

Reference for that is here: forums.iis.net

Relevant config snippets are as follows. You will see I am also messing with the content type for SVG fonts as by default IIS will not gzip them, so by forcing them to text/xml they get compressed too. (Google PageSpeed complains about this)

web.config

 <system.webServer> <serverRuntime frequentHitThreshold="1" enabled="true" /> <staticContent> <clientCache cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="30.00:00:00" /> <remove fileExtension=".svg" /> <mimeMap fileExtension=".svg" mimeType="text/xml" /> </staticContent> <httpCompression directory="%SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp\IIS Temporary Compressed Files"> <scheme name="gzip" dll="%Windir%\system32\inetsrv\gzip.dll" /> <dynamicTypes> <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="true" /> </dynamicTypes> <staticTypes> <add mimeType="image/svg+xml" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="text/xml" enabled="true" /> <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="true" /> </staticTypes> </httpCompression> <urlCompression doStaticCompression="true" doDynamicCompression="true"/> </system.webServer>

applicationHost.config

 <section name="serverRuntime" overrideModeDefault="Allow" />
Improve this answer
8
  • Works like a charm ! Your sir are a genius! Commented Nov 18, 2015 at 12:09
  • I'm seeing really weird results still even after these changes. On one machine the SVG files are never Gzipped no matter what browser I try and on another they are always Gzipped. Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 11:31
  • @ProNotion confirm the mime type is text/xml for the .svg files on both machines. Commented Nov 4, 2017 at 3:13
  • On the client machines? Commented Nov 5, 2017 at 16:03
  • @ProNotion sorry, i thought you meant two different servers were behaving differently. Still worth checking though? Commented Nov 5, 2017 at 19:24

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.