Mod_Pagespeed

[mporter88]

Hello.

Has this module from Google (mod_pagespeed - http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/module.html) been implemented on any TCH servers?

Could it be?

Just found it interesting.

I have a dedicated at TCH and am planning to start hosting a site that

could use the load speed bump and thought to inquire if

there has been any experience good or bad.

MP

dedicated24

[TCH-Carl]

Have been checking this out and the initial responses from users who installed it shows increase in load and memory usage. Moreover this is a beta module which was released very recently, I am not sure how this would work on a production server.

[TCH-Ryan]

I have tested this module personally and though it provides some very nice benefits on a per site basis, it has some serious draw backs on what it does to a server as a whole. The first is that it increases the servers i/o through heavy caching of modified page content, though this is one-time disk writes, it is nevertheless another cache path that needs to be maintained on the server and will receive lots of writes with dynamic content. Further, the module also increases CPU usage through heavy optimization/compression of images, js scripts and static pages, which though provides good benefits is a high price to pay when we can just use mod_deflate to compress with less load. Then there is the memory increase the module causes which adds as much as 1MB to the resident memory footprint of each web server (apache) thread, which can quickly on a loaded server add up to hundreds of MB extra memory used.

 

All told, modpagespeed provides some nice features but it is still a very new module with very real draw backs that need to be addressed before it can find a place in any serious production environment. We will keep an eye on the development of the module and at such time that it is appropriate and will provide meaningful benefits to users without compromising the performance of the server, it will then receive strong consideration for deployment.