http://modperlbook.org/html/ch12_01.html
This works fantastic for us, and avoids any of the issues of chained filters in the mod_perl process. The light weight servers can easily do the compression and SSL work and deal with clients on slow networks, leaving our mod_perl servers to do the actual processing. Even though we process 2M+ requests a day, we generally don't have more than 20 mod_perl httpd procs at any one time, while having 500-1000 frontend apache procs dealing with the slow network clients.
We personally use mod_accel and mod_deflate written by Igor Sysoev. Although most of the docs are in russian, we managed to get it working, and it's been one of those things that has "just worked" since day 1. Anytime we've had any technical issues, I've emailed Igor, and he's been fast and responsive to reply and help, and he knows his stuff!
http://sysoev.ru/en/
See the link at the bottom for our success story and compilation procedure.
Good luck.
Rob
