Speeding Up Web Browsing in Chrome by Enabling Data Compression Proxy

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One of the main reasons why Chrome is fast on both iOS and Android devices is because it has the Google’s Data Compression Proxy enabled by default that significantly reduce the size of web page by 50%.

compression proxy 600x281 - Speeding Up Web Browsing in Chrome by Enabling Data Compression Proxy

The core optimizations that allow us to reduce overall data usage are performed by Google servers. When the Data Compression Proxy feature is enabled, Chrome Mobile opens a connection between your phone and one of the optimization servers running in Google’s datacenters and relays all non-encrypted HTTP requests over this connection.

But this greatness is only available for the mobile browsing. What about the version of Chrome on desktop computers? Any chances we can get the same on our desktop version of Chrome? Well, thanks to this guy who found an experimental Google Chrome Extension that brings this great feature to our desktop.

Go to this Data Compression Proxy on Chrome Web Store, and add it to your Chrome Browser.

The change takes in place right away, and you can find out the data saving by going to this address chrome://net-internals/#bandwidth.

chrome   net internals bandwidth 2014 02 24 10 57 27 - Speeding Up Web Browsing in Chrome by Enabling Data Compression Proxy

You can compare the same data chart to the one from one that doesn’t have Data Compression Extension installed, just to confirm the concept.

If you are familiar with Chrome’s develop tool, you can check out there too by going to Network tab, and the header of a particular component of a webpage.

Chrome Compression Proxy via Develop tool - Speeding Up Web Browsing in Chrome by Enabling Data Compression Proxy

A few final words

While the extension works well in my Chrome, almost perfect actually, please note that 1) this is an experimental extension so be ready if you encounter any issues; and 2) only the HTTP traffics will go through the compression proxy hosted on Google, so HTTPS traffics will still go with the normal router between your browser and the server that hosts the webpage.

Since this experimental extension is also an open source project, if you are a developer who is willing to contribute, feel free to do so.

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