If you configure Apache to enable gzip compression for your static HTML/CSS/JS/etc. files, it automatically outputs a gzipped version to any client that sends an appropriate Accept-Encoding request header. (And for other clients, it just sends the raw uncompressed file.)
My question is: does Apache recompress the raw file every time it is requested by a gzip-accepting client? Or does it cache the gzipped copy, and only recompress it if it notices the last-modified time on the file has changed?
And if it does cache a gzipped copy of your files, where is this cache stored?
Best Answer
No it doesn't cache the gzipped file.
However the cost of compressing the file is less than the cost of squirting the extra packets across the network, hence even without caching you will see lower overall CPU usage (and lower memory usage, and fewer context switches) on your server - and a faster response at the client.
Note that the compressed file is NOT stored in the temp folder - mod_deflate reads input into a fixed size buffer in memory - and when the buffer is full (or the stream ends) the content is compressed and handed back to the webserver.
It will use even less CPU (although speed won't improve noticably) if the content is pre-compressed or cached serverside - there's multiple ways of doing this - mod_rewrite can test for the presence of filename.gz and serve it up in place of filename or you can use a reverse proxy (assuming the content is also served up with caching instructions).