diff --git a/influxdb/client.py b/influxdb/client.py
index 5e39f490..3ebf7ab0 100644
--- a/influxdb/client.py
+++ b/influxdb/client.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 import requests.exceptions
 from six.moves import xrange
 from six.moves.urllib.parse import urlparse
+import gzip
 
 from influxdb.line_protocol import make_lines, quote_ident, quote_literal
 from influxdb.resultset import ResultSet
@@ -89,6 +90,7 @@ def __init__(self,
                  pool_size=10,
                  path='',
                  cert=None,
+                 compression=False
                  ):
         """Construct a new InfluxDBClient object."""
         self.__host = host
@@ -98,6 +100,13 @@ def __init__(self,
         self._database = database
         self._timeout = timeout
         self._retries = retries
+        if compression is True:
+            self._compression = 9
+        else:
+            self._compression = compression
+
+        assert self._compression is False or \
+            (self._compression >= 0 and self._compression <= 9)
 
         self._verify_ssl = verify_ssl
 
@@ -354,6 +363,10 @@ def write(self, data, params=None, expected_response_code=204,
                 data = [data]
             data = ('\n'.join(data) + '\n').encode('utf-8')
 
+        if self._compression is not False:
+            data = gzip.compress(data, self._compression)
+            headers['Content-Encoding'] = 'gzip'
+
         self.request(
             url="write",
             method='POST',