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I recall a utility that proxied all requests through another server, and compressed assets (eg large images) down on the fly on the server- so the end client us

I recall a utility that proxied all requests through another server, and compressed assets (eg large images) down on the fly on the server- so the end client used much less bandwidth to load a heavy web page. It worked quite well and I think some ISPs offered it out of the box in the end

maverick2007 6y ago
I might be remembering this totally wrong but didn't a mobile browser (maybe Opera?) offer this feature as well, like 5 or 10 years ago? I seem to remember trying it out for my Android phone back in the day
- ljf 6y ago
  Yeah opera did this, I remember being amazed at the results in my Nokia e71 - and viewing the desktop site rather than the terrible 201) mobile offerings, but getting great speeds due to the compressed sizes.
ravenstine 6y ago
Same! Can't remember what it was called, but there was a Java application I used 15 years ago that proxied HTTP and compressed assets, which was useful in New Zealand at the time because bandwidth was limited and not as fast(I'm sure that's changed by now).
rgovostes 6y ago
This is what an app called Onavo did. Facebook bought them in order to spy on what people were doing with their phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
- LocalH 6y ago
  I used their compression VPN before Facebook gobbled them up. It worked pretty well.
ldjb 6y ago
Google Web Accelerator [0] did this. Requests were pricked via Google. A side effect of this was that you could access internal Google tools that had been restricted to Google's IP address range – oops! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Accelerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Accelerator
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
That sounds like Squid + data compression proxy. I think I set it up a while back and was impressed by how well it worked. https://gist.github.com/mayli/7d07c5e2913f9d45f3d6a5b122b797c5 https://gist.github.com/mayli/7d07c5e2913f9d45f3d6a5b122b797...
- shagie 6y ago
  One company that I worked at used a NetLi (now part of Akamai). The approach that they used (IIRC) had multiple data centers closer to the end users and then a server in each client's datacenter. The server in the client data center and the servers in the edge data centers would establish a pre-negotiated connection that had its TCP parameters optimized for its traffic... and then serve compressed traffic over that connection. It was pretty impressive back in the days of CGI and JSP - before the presentation was pushed entirely out to the browser and everything was rendered on the server.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Are images not already compressed and always have been on the web? Compressing an already compressed image will surely not do much.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  Compression in the context of (jpeg) images often implies lossy compression. You can apply that multiple times ans still gain size benefits. Other ways are stripping metadata and reducing color palettes. Images on websites are often horribly unoptimized, so if you’re willing to compromise a little on quality you can have substantial gains in bandwidth requirements.
masklinn 6y ago
Opera Mini did (and apparently still does) that. IIRC the proxy server does way more than just compress assets, it re-encodes the page to an internal binary markup format, and handles restricted JS execution with a simplified interaction model (the client had all of 4 events: unload, submit, click, and change, these events would trigger a server call which executes the corresponding handler and sends the updates back). Not everything worked on that thing (most obviously the complex web applications which were starting to crop up around that time), but it was absolutely magic on unreliable GPRS connections 15 years ago.
- lobster45 6y ago
  Opera mini on my blackberry made the gprs connection usable 15 years ago
- tpmx 6y ago
  The client was actually even simpler than that, it was just clicks. Doing anything else wasn't practical with the average latency back then. The rest was done on the serverside using the old Opera Presto core - which scaled very economically, since it had gone through a lot of memory optimization efforts when it was ported to early smartphones/japanese weirdphones. We needed to keep the users's browser "tabs"/windows around until the next click, potentially a few minutes away, so memory usage was a key economical concern at the time. I ran the product/development team from early on until 2014. Glad you liked it. Opera Mini peaked at about 150M monthly active users in like 2012-2013 or so. Since then I'm sure it's been a steady decline. If I were to guess right now, I'd say they new Chinese owners maybe will keep it alive for another 5-7 years, but who knows, they seem to be really focusing on Africa.
- corobo 6y ago
  I used to use their proxy to bypass every web filter I ever came across haha. Ta for introducing me to the whack a mole that is bypassing porn filters, Opera! Sorry I never used your browser as intended
hunter2_ 6y ago
I remember AOL (circa version 3 or 4) doing this. If you saved one of these (maybe by normal means, or maybe only by poking through the local cache) they'd have an .art filename extension and be some proprietary format that wouldn't load in most image software.
divbzero 6y ago
Browsh [1] offers similar functionality via SSH. [1]: https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/

maverick2007 6y ago

I might be remembering this totally wrong but didn't a mobile browser (maybe Opera?) offer this feature as well, like 5 or 10 years ago? I seem to remember trying it out for my Android phone back in the day

ljf 6y ago
Yeah opera did this, I remember being amazed at the results in my Nokia e71 - and viewing the desktop site rather than the terrible 201) mobile offerings, but getting great speeds due to the compressed sizes.

ravenstine 6y ago

Same! Can't remember what it was called, but there was a Java application I used 15 years ago that proxied HTTP and compressed assets, which was useful in New Zealand at the time because bandwidth was limited and not as fast(I'm sure that's changed by now).

rgovostes 6y ago

This is what an app called Onavo did. Facebook bought them in order to spy on what people were doing with their phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

LocalH 6y ago
I used their compression VPN before Facebook gobbled them up. It worked pretty well.

ldjb 6y ago

Google Web Accelerator [0] did this. Requests were pricked via Google. A side effect of this was that you could access internal Google tools that had been restricted to Google's IP address range – oops! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Accelerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Web_Accelerator

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago

That sounds like Squid + data compression proxy. I think I set it up a while back and was impressed by how well it worked. https://gist.github.com/mayli/7d07c5e2913f9d45f3d6a5b122b797c5 https://gist.github.com/mayli/7d07c5e2913f9d45f3d6a5b122b797...

shagie 6y ago
One company that I worked at used a NetLi (now part of Akamai). The approach that they used (IIRC) had multiple data centers closer to the end users and then a server in each client's datacenter. The server in the client data center and the servers in the edge data centers would establish a pre-negotiated connection that had its TCP parameters optimized for its traffic... and then serve compressed traffic over that connection. It was pretty impressive back in the days of CGI and JSP - before the presentation was pushed entirely out to the browser and everything was rendered on the server.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Are images not already compressed and always have been on the web? Compressing an already compressed image will surely not do much.

Xylakant 6y ago
Compression in the context of (jpeg) images often implies lossy compression. You can apply that multiple times ans still gain size benefits. Other ways are stripping metadata and reducing color palettes. Images on websites are often horribly unoptimized, so if you’re willing to compromise a little on quality you can have substantial gains in bandwidth requirements.

masklinn 6y ago

Opera Mini did (and apparently still does) that. IIRC the proxy server does way more than just compress assets, it re-encodes the page to an internal binary markup format, and handles restricted JS execution with a simplified interaction model (the client had all of 4 events: unload, submit, click, and change, these events would trigger a server call which executes the corresponding handler and sends the updates back). Not everything worked on that thing (most obviously the complex web applications which were starting to crop up around that time), but it was absolutely magic on unreliable GPRS connections 15 years ago.

lobster45 6y ago
Opera mini on my blackberry made the gprs connection usable 15 years ago
tpmx 6y ago
The client was actually even simpler than that, it was just clicks. Doing anything else wasn't practical with the average latency back then. The rest was done on the serverside using the old Opera Presto core - which scaled very economically, since it had gone through a lot of memory optimization efforts when it was ported to early smartphones/japanese weirdphones. We needed to keep the users's browser "tabs"/windows around until the next click, potentially a few minutes away, so memory usage was a key economical concern at the time. I ran the product/development team from early on until 2014. Glad you liked it. Opera Mini peaked at about 150M monthly active users in like 2012-2013 or so. Since then I'm sure it's been a steady decline. If I were to guess right now, I'd say they new Chinese owners maybe will keep it alive for another 5-7 years, but who knows, they seem to be really focusing on Africa.
corobo 6y ago
I used to use their proxy to bypass every web filter I ever came across haha. Ta for introducing me to the whack a mole that is bypassing porn filters, Opera! Sorry I never used your browser as intended

hunter2_ 6y ago

I remember AOL (circa version 3 or 4) doing this. If you saved one of these (maybe by normal means, or maybe only by poking through the local cache) they'd have an .art filename extension and be some proprietary format that wouldn't load in most image software.

divbzero 6y ago

Browsh [1] offers similar functionality via SSH. [1]: https://www.brow.sh/ https://www.brow.sh/