There is a lot of buzz about this around the web. (One evidence is that the GZip servlet I published here is nearing 3000 hits).

I have worked a lot with optimization lately and I stumbled on one of the more complete articles I have seen so far by Aaron Hopkins. Judging by the dates in his example it is about two years old but the principles for Ajax calls and HTTP and TCP/IP has not changed that much in the last 10 years.

http://www.die.net/musings/page_load_time/

Happy reading!

If you want to discuss this matter it is really one of my favorite topics.

Feel free to post a question.