How To Install, Optimize, And Harden brotli With NGINX and Ubuntu 22.04

If you’re looking for a way to speed up your website and reduce your bandwidth usage, Brotli compression may be the solution for you. Brotli is a new, open-source data compression algorithm that is designed to provide better compression ratios and faster compression and decompression speeds than other popular compression algorithms like Gzip.

In this SEO blog post, we’ll be discussing how to install, optimize, and harden Brotli with NGINX and Ubuntu 22.04.

Step 1: Installing Brotli with NGINX

Before we can optimize and harden Brotli, we need to first install it on our server. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your Ubuntu 22.04 server as the root user.
2. Run the following command to update your package index:

   sudo apt-get update

3. Install the Brotli compression library:

   sudo apt-get install libbrotli-dev

4. Install the Brotli module for NGINX:

   sudo apt-get install nginx-module-brotli

5. Restart NGINX to apply the changes:

   sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 2: Optimizing Brotli with NGINX

Now that Brotli is installed on our server, we can optimize it for better performance. Here are some tips:

1. Enable Brotli compression for all static files (HTML, CSS, JS, images) by adding the following code to your NGINX configuration file:

   brotli on;
   brotli_comp_level 6;
   brotli_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript image/svg+xml;

2. Adjust the brotli_comp_level parameter to a value that balances compression ratio and CPU usage for your specific server hardware.
3. Monitor your server’s resource usage (CPU, RAM, disk I/O) after enabling Brotli to ensure it’s not causing performance issues.

Step 3: Hardening Brotli with NGINX

As with any software, it’s important to harden Brotli to reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities. Here are some best practices:

1. Keep your server and Brotli library up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates.
2. Restrict access to the Brotli module by adding the following code to your NGINX configuration file:

   location / {
       # ...
       # Only allow localhost to use Brotli
       allow 127.0.0.1;
       deny all;
   }

3. Limit the size of data that can be compressed by Brotli by setting the brotli_buffer_size parameter to an appropriate value for your server hardware and website content.

By following these steps, you can install, optimize, and harden Brotli with NGINX and Ubuntu 22.04, improving your website’s performance and security.