Modes of Operation

Web Content Accelerator is an optional Virtual Traffic Manager feature that is enabled through a specially configured license key. Two levels of functionality are available, depending on your license key: Express and Enterprise.

Web Content Accelerator Express applies a predefined level of optimization to your Web content, designed to best match a wide range of applications. In this mode, a virtual server with Web Content Accelerator enabled compresses the HTML contained in Web pages it processes. It also performs the following optimizations on the page resources as the client fetches them:

Minification and compression of JavaScript files.

Minification and compression of style sheets.

Background images are inlined or versioned.

Web fonts are versioned.

Resampling of image content.

Compression of all resources.

For more information on each of these items, see Understanding Optimization Techniques.

ATTENTION In Express mode, Web Content Accelerator cannot be used to optimize sites requiring authentication. For more details, see Authentication.

Web Content Accelerator-specific TrafficScript functions are limited to operating with their default parameters in Express mode, and cannot be overridden. See the Virtual Traffic Manager: TrafficScript Guide for more information.

An Enterprise license permits Web Content Accelerator to inspect and modify the content of HTML pages, enabling it to perform a full range of optimization techniques. Web Content Accelerator Enterprise also provides full control over the individual optimization parameters that are applied to your Web infrastructure. You can create and apply specific optimization profiles to individual application scopes handled by your virtual servers.

This chapter provides a complete description of the features and capabilities of Web Content Accelerator when running in Enterprise mode. Some elements do not apply to Express mode.