nginx with compression (gzip)

pangolin traefik without compression

pangolin traefik with compression (zstd)

Using Traefik's compression middleware with an empty configuration enables gzip/zstd/brotli compression for almost all content types, because Traefik's compress middleware works on a blacklist model unless e.g. Caddy.

Without excludedContentTypes, Traefik will attempt to compress:
Images - already compressed
Video segments - already compressed -> compression wastes CPU and can break range-requests and seeking
Audio - already compressed -> same issue as video
WOFF/WOFF2 fonts - already compressed

For each request to a non-compressible asset:

• Proxy CPU is wasted running the compression algorithm
• Client CPU is wasted decompressing for no benefit
• Latency increases because the proxy may buffer the response before sending
• Streaming breaks or stutters, flushInterval and range-requests interact badly with on-the-fly compression
• File size barely changes or grows slightly due to compression headers

Therefor I run it like this:

http:
  middlewares:
    compress:
      compress:
        excludedContentTypes:
          - image/jpeg
          - image/png
          - image/webp
          - image/avif
          - video/*
          - audio/*
          - font/woff
          - font/woff2
          - application/zip
          - application/gzip