Google launches mod_spdy for Apache servers

Google has launched an installable version of mod_spdy for Apache powered servers.

The company said:

Once installed, your Apache server will begin using SPDY to communicate with SPDY-compatible browsers (e.g. Google Chrome, Android, and recent versions of Firefox). SPDY runs over HTTPS, so any HTTP (non-HTTPS) traffic on your site will not be affected by mod_spdy. Further, since SPDY requires server-side support for the NPN TLS HTTPS extension, which is not available in most current Apache environments, a version of mod_ssl with NPN support is included with the mod_spdy packages.

Google launches mod_spdy for Apache servers

This Apache module is unlikely to help people running regular websites serving HTTP pages. But is worth a try for projects running on secured environments. Google added:

We’ve tested mod_spdy using locally-mirrored pages from popular websites, and have seen significant speedups compared to serving via plain HTTPS – comparable to the gains that Google’s own servers achieve by using SPDY – with no extra configuration and negligible effect on Apache’s CPU and memory usage. In extreme cases, for example, pages with many small resources, we’ve seen mod_spdy reduce load times by more than 50%.