How to compress and optimise an Angular2 application

There are some things that let you increase speed your app, among others:

1. Use lazy loading of modules every where possible (link)
2. build a project with the production profile
3. Use Ahead of Time (AOT) compiling (link).
4. Using Angular-Universal let you move part of rendering of project to server-side

As of 2019: Ahead of Time (AOT) compiling is enabled by default when the ng build --prod option is given.

For those interested in the HTACCESS file I am using, here it is. This does force https which slows things down by about 100ms:

#REDIRECT ROUTES TO INDEX (fixes broken routes with angular)
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301,NE]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*) /index.html [NC,L]
#ENABLE GZIP COMPRESSION TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
# SET EXPIRE HEADERS TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 days"
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 2 week"
  ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 2 week"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 2 week"
  ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
</ifModule>
# END Expire headers
# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
  <filesMatch "\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "public"
  </filesMatch>
  <filesMatch "\.(css)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "public"
  </filesMatch>
  <filesMatch "\.(js)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "public"
  </filesMatch>
  <filesMatch "\.(x?html?|php)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate"
  </filesMatch>
</ifModule>
# END Cache-Control Headers