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If the server supports HTTP compression at all, invariably it will support gzip, in which case it might compress the response and respond with the following response header:
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As it turns out, SAML metadata is highly compressible., as illustrated below:
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$ url=http://md.incommon.org/InCommon/InCommon-metadata-preview.xml $ curl --silent --head $url verbose $url > /dev/null * Connected to md.incommon.org (207.75.165.125) port 80 (#0) > GET /InCommon/InCommon-metadata-preview.xml HTTP/1.1 > Host: md.incommon.org > User-Agent: curl/7.43.0 > Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 200 OK < Date: FriSun, 1416 Apr 2017 2212:2925:2648 GMT < Server: Apache < Last-Modified: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 18:04:33 GMT < ETag: "2926d4c-54d2446178bc5" < Accept-Ranges: bytes < Content-Length: 43150668 < Content-Type: application/samlmetadata+xml < * Connection #0 to host md.incommon.org left intact $ curl --silent --head --compressed $url verbose --compressed $url > /dev/null * Connected to md.incommon.org (207.75.165.125) port 80 (#0) > GET /InCommon/InCommon-metadata-preview.xml HTTP/1.1 > Host: md.incommon.org > User-Agent: curl/7.43.0 > Accept: */* > Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip > < HTTP/1.1 200 OK < Date: FriSun, 1416 Apr 2017 12:22:29:4543 GMT < Server: Apache < Last-Modified: Thu, 06 Apr 2017 19:50:04 GMT < ETag: "7cf358-54c84d0b1266f" < Accept-Ranges: bytes < Content-Length: 8188760 < Content-Encoding: gzip < Vary: Accept-Encoding < Content-Type: application/samlmetadata+xml < * Connection #0 to host md.incommon.org left intact |
Shibboleth supports HTTP compression out of the box, with zero configuration. If you know of other metadata client software that supports HTTP compression, please add a comment to this page.