Prevent server from encoding in gzip when downloading with WebClient

Question

I have a download manager of sorts that uses WebClient.DownloadFileAsync. Webclient doesn't seem to handle gzip encoding and some servers are insisting on using it. Since almost all of the files this will be downloading are already compressed, it would be nice just to be able to force it to stop.

I've tried setting the Accept-Encoding to nothing but servers still keep sending gzip. Is it possible to disable or will I have to resort to checking responseheaders?

Answer 1

See this Jeff Atwood post for the solution:

http://www.­codinghorror.­com/­blog/­2004/­08/­netwebclient-­and-­gzip.­html