You can speed up downloads or web page access time with Apache mod_deflate module. The mod_deflate module provides the DEFLATE output filter that allows output from your server to be compressed before being sent to the client over the network.

This decreases the amount of time and data transmitted over the network, resulting in faster web experience or downloads for visitors.

Make sure mod_deflate included with your Apache server (by default it is now installed with all modern distro).

How can I speed up downloads from my Apache 2.0 server?

Open httpd.conf file using a text editor such as vi:

Append following line:

Append following configuration <Location /> directive:

Above line only compress html and xml files. Here is the configuration from one of my production box:

Close and save the file. Next restart apache web server. All of the above extension file should compressed by mod_deflate:

You can also specify specific directory and enabling compression only for the html files. For example /static/help/ directory:

In real life, there are issues with compressing other types of files such as mp3 or images. If you don't want to compress images or mp3 files, add following to your configuration:

Please note that this processing takes additional CPU and memory on your server as well as on the client browser. So you must make decision which document you need to compress (thanks to mdxp).