Getting HTTP Compression (GZip) to work with URL Routing on IIS 6

Question

I haven't seen any questions specifically addressing this specific issue.

When URL Routing is used, The Request goes into IIS and then is routed to the Aspx Page. For example, a site: www.site.com/products may route the request to wwwroot/inetpub/mysite/pages/productsPage.aspx

It's important to note that the page is ROUTED, not ReDirected.

Note that to get the URLs to work properly in IIS 6, a Wildcard extension has to be set up which routes all resources to Asp.Net (Asp.Net will then hand static resources back over) This is documented here: http://blog.codeville.net/2008/07/04/options-for-deploying-aspnet-mvc-to-iis-6/

It would appear that IIS doesn't GZip the content when it sends it back. I have followed the instructions here: http://www.kavinda.net/2007/02/17/how-to-enable-http-compression-iis6.html

to enable IIS 6 compression.

Any idea why Http Compression doesn't seem to work? It seems to work fine on other sites on my server. Just the one with URL Routing isn't working

Answer 1

Make your ASP.NET application gzip its output itself with a method like this one.

Answer 2

Best thing to do is use HttpCompress by Bel Lowery. It's a simple, free and open source HttpModule handling the HTTP compression of your pages. You can use it in combination with the IIS Http Compression option.

I use HttpCompress in combination with Vici MVC and it works smooth!

I've been searching the net for hours and it was either use HttpCompress, buy a commercial project (Port80 Software has a solution) or write my own HttpModule.

PS: IIS does HTTP compression based on the file extension. That's why it's not working for websites using URL routing.

Answer 3

Did you try this way ? MS KB322603

To enable IIS 5.0 to compress .aspx pages, follow these steps:

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Type net stop iisadmin, and then press ENTER.
3. Type cd C:\InetPub\adminscripts, and then press ENTER.
4. Type the following, and then press ENTER: CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZIP/HcScriptFileExtensions "asp" "dll" "exe" "aspx"
5. Type the following, and then press ENTER: CSCRIPT.EXE ADSUTIL.VBS SET W3Svc/Filters/Compression/DEFLATE/HcScriptFileExtensions "asp" "dll" "exe" "aspx"
6. Type net start w3svc, and then press ENTER.