WebPerf Brotli compression algorithm coming to Chrome browser soon !

Firefox 44 already has Brotli compression algorithm support. Now Chrome will soon Chrome is about to get a lot faster with new compression algorithm and Centmin Mod 123.09beta01 already has Nginx supporting Brotli via ngx_brotli nginx module

Brotli will be only available on HTTPS protocol and can offer up to 20-40% better compression of static text based site assets (css, js, xml, etc) compared to current browser gzip/deflate compression. Current web browser support for Brotli compression algorithm Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

Note though there's an ngx_pagespeed conflict with ngx_brotli module if using ngx_pagespeed 1.9 branch which is fixed in ngx_pagespeed 1.10 branch. However, ngx_pagespeed 1.10 also has a conflict with Clang compiler and system GCC compiler versions <4.8 (i.e. CentOS 6 uses GCC 4.4.7). This means if Firefox 44 is used over HTTPS with brotli and ngx_pagespeed 1.9 branch enabled, ngx_pagespeed doesn't optimise any of the web page resources so it's served just like non-ngx_pagespeed regular page site assets.

A test 123.09beta01-gcc branch has a tested workaround that allows CentOS 6 systems switch back from Clang compiler to using devtoolset-3 yum packaged GCC 4.9.1 to compile ngx_pagespeed 1.10 branch against GCC 4.9.1. I just merged 123.09beta01-gcc + 123.09beta01 latest into a new branch 123.09beta01-gcc2 for further tests.

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FYI, this very forum is running 123.09beta01 with Nginx Brotli support enabled over HTTPS for Firefox 44 browsers can see the better compression support. However, my CDN assets via KeyCDN do not support Brotli from KeyCDN servers right now. But KeyCDN has plans for Brotli support on their CDN servers eventually too Brotli Compression - Web Performance - KeyCDN Community

 

More coverage

• The Web Gets a Speed Boost With Google's Brotli
• New "Brotli" compression ready to fix Chrome woes
• Google's latest data-squeezing algorithm is coming to Chrome
• Google's new algorithm will make Chrome run much faster | The Verge
• Google Is Enabling Brotli Compression Support In Chrome - Phoronix

 

How To Enable Nginx Brotli Support in Centmin Mod LEMP ?

For Centmin Mod 123.09beta01 users to enable Nginx brotli support you can set in a persistent config option outlined at centminmod.com/upgrade.html#persistent at /etc/centminmod/custom_config.inc and adding to it the below variable and then run centmin.sh menu option 4 to recompile Nginx

Code:

NGINX_LIBBROTLI=y

ngx_brotli module google/ngx_brotli · GitHub implements a better compression method for on the fly and static compressed files than gzip. You can read more info on Brotli at Google Open Source Blog: Introducing Brotli: a new compression algorithm for the internet and Bits Up!: Brotli Content-Encoding for Firefox 44 Brotli content encoding is already supported by Firefox 44 (Nightly) and it's expected to be supported by Chrome soon. ngx_brotli directives are similar to Nginx's gzip directives and are outlined at google/ngx_brotli · GitHub

examples include

Code:

brotli_static on|off|always
brotli on|off
brotli_types
brotli_buffers
brotli_comp_level
brotli_min_length

example for nginx.conf

Code:

        brotli on;
        brotli_static on;
        brotli_min_length 1400;
        brotli_buffers 32 8k;
        brotli_comp_level 5;
        brotli_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/javascript application/x-javascript application/xml application/xml+rss application/ecmascript application/json image/svg+xml;

Notes

• Note if you actively use ngx_pagespeed 1.9 branch, you will have conflicts with ngx_brotli in that ngx_brotli will disable ngx_pagespeed functionality. If you don't use ngx_pagespeed, then that doesn't matter as Nginx will still work as will ngx_brotli. This is fixed in ngx_pagespeed 1.10 branch. However, ngx_pagespeed 1.10 branch has newer GCC >4.8 requirements and has problems with CentOS 6 systems that use GCC 4.4.7 right now. I just merged 123.09beta01-gcc + 123.09beta01 latest into a new branch 123.09beta01-gcc2 which has an experimental workaround for ngx_pagespeed 1.10 and CentOS 6 systems.
• Both ngx_brotli and ngx_pagespeed 1.10 branches have higher GCC >4.8 version compiler requirements so for CentOS 6 based Centmin Mod LEMP stack systems with GCC 4.4.7 defaults, 123.09beta01 and 123.09beta01-gcc2 branches install devtoolset-3 YUM repo which provides an alternate path install for GCC 4.9.1. This keeps system GCC 4.4.7 working so doesn't break CentOS 6 systems. This GCC 4.9.1 version is used to compile ngx_brotli and nginx + ngx_pagespeed 1.10. CentOS 7.x doesn't need devtoolset-3 as it defaults to using GCC 4.8.5.

 

Do you actually use ngx_pagespeed ? meaning do you enable it in your vhosts and use pscontrol on to enable it ?

If you use and enable ngx_pagespeed

If you do, then you need to switch to 123.09beta01-gcc2 branch which has ngx_pagespeed 1.10.x branch and via centmin.sh menu option 23 submenu option 3 first. Then exit out of centmin.sh and re-enter /usr/local/src/centminmod. Then using persistent config option outlined at centminmod.com/upgrade.html#persistent at /etc/centminmod/custom_config.inc and adding to it the below variable and then run centmin.sh menu option 4 to recompile Nginx. Note, 123.09beta01-gcc2 branch doesn't get all the timely updates that 123.09beta01 gets as 123.09beta01-gcc2 is solely just for testing ngx_pagespeed 1.10.x with devtoolset-3 based GCC 4.9.1 for CentOS 6.

Code:

NGINX_LIBBROTLI=y

End result will be 123.09beta01-gcc2 switches Nginx compiler back from Clang to GCC 4.9.1 for CentOS 6 or GCC 4.8.5 for CentOS 7.

If you DO NOT use and enable ngx_pagespeed

If you DO NOT use ngx_pagespeed and have not used pscontrol on command to enable it and setup (uncomment 3 lines) in your vhost for pagespeed related *.conf, then you can just use existing 123.09beta01 with existing ngx_pagespeed 1.9.x version and using persistent config option outlined at centminmod.com/upgrade.html#persistent at /etc/centminmod/custom_config.inc and adding to it the below variable and then run centmin.sh menu option 4 to recompile Nginx.

In fact if you DO NOT use ngx_pagespeed at all, you can disable it from being compiled with nginx via FAQ 31 outlined settings

Code:

NGINX_LIBBROTLI=y
NGINX_PAGESPEED=n

 

Lazy mode LOL

FYI, webpagetest.org Dulles, VA region is only one with option to select Firefox Nightly browser support which has brotli support in browser so when you check headers look for content-encoding = br

 

And Cloudflare's Brotli vs Gzip/Zlib benchmarks Results of experimenting with Brotli for dynamic web content

so I guess for speed instead of compression ratio something like these settings might be better ? but that is for cloudflare's zlib level 8 vs brotli level 4. Apache and Nginx usually default to zlib/gzip around level 6

Code:

        brotli on;
        brotli_static on;
        brotli_min_length 50000;
        brotli_buffers 32 8k;
        brotli_comp_level 4;
        brotli_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/javascript application/x-javascript application/xml application/xml+rss application/ecmascript application/json image/svg+xml;

So for zlib/gzip level 6 vs brotli level 4 lets revisit Cloudflare's compression speed (not compression ratio).

• zlib level 8 all files compression speed = 43.1MB/s with 27.7% compression ratio on 100KB file would take 0.0022658 seconds
  
• zlib level 6 all files compression speed = 58MB/s with 27.8% compression ratio on 100KB file would take 0.0016837 seconds
• brotli level 5 all files compression speed = 30.3MB/s with 26.1% compression ratio on 100KB file would take 0.0032229 seconds
  
• brotli level 4 all files compression speed = 51MB/s with 27.7% compression ratio on 100KB file would take 0.0019148 seconds

So with that info, seems brotli level 4 is about the same or slightly better than zlib level 6 for ALL files

	[20,1024)	[1024,2048)	[2048,3072)	[3072,4096)	[4096,8192)	[8192,16384)	[16384,32768)	[32768,65536)	[65536,+∞)	All files
zlib 1	5.9	21.8	34.4	43.4	62.1	89.8	117.9	127.9	139.6	125.5
zlib 2	5.9	21.7	34.3	43.0	61.2	87.6	114.3	123.1	130.7	118.9
zlib 3	5.9	21.7	34.0	42.4	60.5	84.8	108.0	114.5	114.9	106.9
zlib 4	5.8	20.9	32.2	39.8	54.8	74.9	93.3	97.5	96.1	90.7
zlib 5	5.8	20.6	31.4	38.3	51.6	68.4	82.0	81.3	73.2	71.6
zlib 6	5.8	20.6	31.2	37.9	50.6	64.0	73.7	70.2	57.5	58.0
zlib 7	5.8	20.5	31.0	37.4	49.6	60.8	67.4	64.6	51.0	52.0
zlib 8	5.8	20.5	31.0	37.2	48.8	53.2	56.6	56.5	41.6	43.1
zlib 9	5.8	20.6	30.8	37.3	48.6	51.7	56.6	54.2	40.4	41.9
brotli 1	3.4	12.8	20.4	25.9	37.8	57.3	80.0	94.1	105.8	91.3
brotli 2	3.4	12.4	19.5	24.4	35.2	52.3	71.2	82.0	89.0	78.8
brotli 3	3.4	12.3	19.0	23.7	34.0	49.8	67.4	76.3	81.5	73.0
brotli 4	2.0	7.6	11.9	15.2	22.2	33.1	44.7	51.9	58.5	51.0
brotli 5	2.0	5.2	8.0	10.3	15.0	22.0	29.7	33.3	32.8	30.3
brotli 6	1.8	3.8	5.5	7.0	10.5	16.3	23.5	28.6	28.4	25.6
brotli 7	1.5	2.3	3.1	3.7	4.9	7.2	10.7	15.5	19.6	16.2
brotli 8	1.4	2.3	2.7	3.1	4.0	5.3	7.1	10.6	15.1	12.2
brotli 9	1.3	2.1	2.4	2.8	3.4	4.3	5.5	7.0	10.6	8.8
brotli 10	0.2	0.4	0.4	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.5	0.5

However, if you break it down by file sizes you can still see brotli level 4 having benefits over zlib/gzip levels 6 and 8. For compression ratios for level 6 and 8 zlib vs brotli level 4 and 5:

	[20,1024)	[1024,2048)	[2048,3072)	[3072,4096)	[4096,8192)	[8192,16384)	[16384,32768)	[32768,65536)	[65536,+∞)	All files
zlib 6	64.4%	45.5%	41.3%	36.7%	32.0%	29.3%	27.0%	27.6%	27.6%	27.8%
zlib 8	64.4%	45.5%	41.3%	36.6%	32.0%	29.2%	26.9%	27.5%	27.4%	27.7%
brotli 4	53.8%	40.8%	38.6%	34.8%	30.9%	28.7%	27.0%	28.0%	27.5%	27.7%
brotli 5	49.9%	37.7%	35.7%	32.3%	28.7%	26.6%	25.2%	26.2%	26.0%	26.1%

So maybe still keep level 5 brotli compression given the actual speed difference is minor ?

Code:

        brotli on;
        brotli_static on;
        brotli_min_length 1000;
        brotli_buffers 32 8k;
        brotli_comp_level 5;
        brotli_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/javascript application/x-javascript application/xml application/xml+rss application/ecmascript application/json image/svg+xml;

Connection speed up of Brotli in MB/s from Cloudflare results

	[20,1024)	[1024,2048)	[2048,3072)	[3072,4096)	[4096,8192)	[8192,16384)	[16384,32768)	[32768,65536)	[65536,+∞)	All files
brotli 4	0.33	0.56	0.52	0.47	0.42	0.44	-0.24	-2.86	0.02	0.00
brotli 5	0.44	0.55	0.60	0.61	0.71	0.97	1.01	1.08	2.24	1.58
brotli 6	0.36	0.36	0.37	0.37	0.45	0.63	0.69	0.86	1.52	1.12
brotli 7	0.28	0.20	0.19	0.18	0.19	0.23	0.24	0.34	0.72	0.52
brotli 8	0.26	0.20	0.17	0.15	0.15	0.17	0.15	0.21	0.48	0.35
brotli 9	0.25	0.19	0.15	0.13	0.13	0.13	0.11	0.13	0.30	0.24
brotli 10	0.03	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.03	0.03	0.02	0.02	0.02	0.02

 

FYI, Firefox 44 seems to be released and has Brotli support Firefox — Notes (44.0) — Mozilla

 

the php settings don't belong in custom_config.inc they belong in their own *.ini php file as outlined at PHP-FPM - CentminMod.com LEMP Nginx web stack for CentOS

Code:

NGINX_LIBBROTLI=y
NGINX_PAGESPEED=n

yes

no need to do anything Centmin Mod nginx compilation routine will detect NGINX_LIBBROTLI=y and automatically add those settings into an include file /usr/local/nginx/conf/brotli_inc.conf inserted into nginx.conf. So if you want to edit those settings edit /usr/local/nginx/conf/brotli_inc.conf

 

Yup

Yup

 

yup as per instructions at Upgrade Centmin Mod - CentminMod.com LEMP Nginx web stack for CentOS

 

you installing on centmin mod 123.09beta01 ? only this version as brotli support. Centmin Mod 123.08stable doesn't support brotli

if on 123.09beta01, check if the actual file exists

Code:

ls -lah /usr/local/nginx/conf/brotli_inc.conf