what is HTTP compression?

[cryoffalcon]

Hi,
today i read about HTTP compression in wikipedia but believe me i didn't understand a word but though it made me curious as it has something to do with SEO. So my questions are:
1- What is HTTP compression?
2- How exactly it is done?
3- What are advantages and disadvantages of doing it?
4- Any big player (e-g google, yahoo, facebook etc) anyone doing it?

[felgall]

1. it is a way of making the files sent to the server as small as possible
2. it is done with configuration settings on the server
3. the advantage of doing it is files take up less bandwidth, the disadvantage is that early browsers such as Mozaic didn't support it (so it couldn't be used in the early 1990s)
4. Most web sites use it

[cryoffalcon]

Originally Posted by felgall

1. it is a way of making the files sent to the server as small as possible
2. it is done with configuration settings on the server
3. the advantage of doing it is files take up less bandwidth, the disadvantage is that early browsers such as Mozaic didn't support it (so it couldn't be used in the early 1990s)
4. Most web sites use it

Well thanks for reply i understand what you said, but can you give me a link to a complete example on http compression like a sample, or from where can i learn http compression method?

[felgall]

It would be difficult to find a page on the web now that doesn't use it so for an example just pick any web page.