The ability for S3 and CloudFront to properly handle GZIP compressed files would further encourage the use of S3+Cloudfront for static websites. As a host S3 + CloudFront have arbitrary scalability, good performance across the globe and is pay as you go.
With GZIP compression, bandwidth drops but more importantly load times can decrease significantly. "It takes several round trips between client and server before the two can communicate at the highest possible speed [and for broadband users] the number of round trips is the larger factor in determining the time required to load a web page"[2]. There was a graph depicting the non-linear impact file size increases have on load times but I can't find it... =[
In the Google article on compression, a 175% increase in a page's size (non-GZIP version of Facebook.com) results in a 414% increase in load time on DSL. Load time does not increase linearly with file size and hence why GZIP compression is so important for performant websites!
With GZIP compression, bandwidth drops but more importantly load times can decrease significantly. "It takes several round trips between client and server before the two can communicate at the highest possible speed [and for broadband users] the number of round trips is the larger factor in determining the time required to load a web page"[2]. There was a graph depicting the non-linear impact file size increases have on load times but I can't find it... =[
In the Google article on compression, a 175% increase in a page's size (non-GZIP version of Facebook.com) results in a 414% increase in load time on DSL. Load time does not increase linearly with file size and hence why GZIP compression is so important for performant websites!
[1]: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/02/host-your-static-website-...
[2]: https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/use-compression