it seems worth noting that the block size of gzip/deflate (<a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1950" rel="nofollow">http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1950</a>) can be up to 32Kb, so i wonder if browsers are smart to enough to start rendering before a complete block has been received?<p>if not, compression could kill network latency... from the graph it seems maximum compression would require about 21 round trips minimum. i suppose this is why zlib's deflate has a flush argument:
<a href="http://www.zlib.net/manual.html#Basic" rel="nofollow">http://www.zlib.net/manual.html#Basic</a>