HTTP compression,bandwidth utilization,web servers,browsers ,HTTP message,cached,transferred,Compression,Transfer-Encoding

HTTP compression is a capability that can be built into web servers and web clients to improve transfer speed and bandwidth utilization.

HTTP data is compressed before it is sent from the server: compliant browsers will announce what methods are supported to the server before downloading the correct format; browsers that do not support compliant compression method will download uncompressed data. The most common compression schemes include gzip and Deflate, however a full list of available schemes is maintained by the IANA.Additionally, third parties develop new methods and include them in their products, for example the Google Shared Dictionary Compression Over HTTP (SDCH) scheme implemented in the Google Chrome browser and used on Google servers.

There are two different ways compression can be done in HTTP. At a lower level, a Transfer-Encoding header field may indicate the payload of a HTTP message is compressed. At a higher level, a Content-Encoding header field may indicate that a resource being transferred, cached, or otherwise referenced is compressed. Compression using Content-Encoding is more widely supported than Transfer-Encoding, and some browsers do not advertise for Transfer-Encoding compression to avoid triggering bugs in servers