A single core machine already overloaded is going to get even worse introducing the cpu overhead of gzipping response bodies (assuming it’s cpu bound and not IO bound)
Cache control headers will help with return traffic
More cpu cores
If using nginx ensure sendfile is enabled and workers are set to auto or tuned for your setup
Check ulimit file handle limits
Offload static assets to cdn
Since it’s a static html site, you could even host on s3, netlify, etc
> A single core machine already overloaded is going to get even worse introducing the cpu overhead of gzipping response bodies (assuming it’s cpu bound and not IO bound)
Unless your CPU is burning due to additional system calls being made.
> Actually running zlib on every request will only make it worse.
I wouldn't be so sure, given that without zlib HTTP connections take longer, thereby increasing the size of the wait queue and the number of parallel connections.
