Apache ModBrotli?

[Sharad Binjola]

It seems to me servers generating dynamic content would need something on the lines of ModDeflate to do brotli compression. Does an Apache (httpd) ModBrotli module already exist or does someone have plans for a project to implement such a module?

Thanks

[Evgenii Kliuchnikov]

Hello.

  Currently only nginx brotli module exists.

  As a temporary solution for Apache you could try this: https://lyncd.com/2015/11/brotli-support-apache/

  We hope that Apache module will appear soon.

[Evgenii Kliuchnikov]

Also there is ongoing brotli integration to pagespeed Apache module.

[Sharad Binjola]

Thanks. Is there a page tracking progress of the pagespeed module so that I can follow along?

[Evgenii Kliuchnikov]

I think it is here: https://github.com/pagespeed/mod_pagespeed/issues/1148

[Guillaume Rossolini]

Hi,

Another way is along these lines (make sure you have mod_negotiation enabled):

conf/mime.types:

application/x-gzip gz gzip

application/x-brotli br bro brotli

application/x-lzma lzma

apache2.conf:

MultiviewsMatch NegotiatedOnly

AddType text/html .br .lzma .gz

AddType text/css .br .lzma .gz

AddType application/javascript .br .lzma .gz

AddEncoding x-gzip .gz

AddEncoding br .br
AddEncoding bro .br
AddEncoding brotli .br

AddEncoding lzma .lzma

sites-available/<your virtualhost>.conf (inside "Directory")

Options +Multiviews

There might be a few other options to consider, but this kind of config seems more flexible.

Regards,

[Sharad Binjola]

Thanks Evgenii - that helps - though it looks like they found some memory utilization issues.

@Guillaume - I am not very well versed with mod_negotiation, but looked at https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_negotiation.html Is the config you have written going to actually do the Brotli encoding of *dynamically generated pages* being flushed out of apache or is it only going to map the given filename extensions to the specified encoding type?

Thanks

[Guillaume Rossolini]

Hi,

brotli compression is very resource-intensive and doing it on the fly might induce too much latency and/or load to be useful.

I'd suggest asynchronously compressing your assets and cached content, not your dynamic content. There is the same problem with zopfli, as both iterate many times to find the best compression ratio, and so they purposefully waste cycles.

By the way, the rules I gave are based on httpd-2.4, they should work on 2.2 too though I have not tried them. They just map filename extensions to specified encoding types.

Regards,

[Sharad Binjola]

Hi Guillaume,

Thanks for the information. Yep, brotli is pretty resource intensive on the server but an nginx module has been developed, so I am going to stay hopeful for apache. My website's traffic runs through some very slow networks where bandwidth is a big issue, so perhaps a moderate quality setting for compression may work well to reduce overall latency, without taxing CPU/memory excessively.

And I agree - Brotli on static files like CSS/JS definitely makes sense.

Thanks.