With respect to the OP's specific problem, namely serving up compressed static assets, why use Node.js at all? They're static files. Host 'em on a CDN or let

With respect to the OP's specific problem, namely serving up compressed static assets, why use Node.js at all? They're static files. Host 'em on a CDN or let lighttpd take care of it. There's no need to add the complexity of Node to a relatively simple problem.