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Re: Whatever happend to compression?



At 10:26 AM 5/20/96 -0400, Robert Glenn wrote:
>
>The idea of having a transform that performs compression before
>encryption has come up several times in the past, but I don't believe
>it has been discussed recently.  Notably, compression has not been
>added to any of the existing transform documents.  Along these lines, I
>have a few questions.
>
>1. Is compression still of interest as part of this group?  If so,
>   I'll ask our local compression folks for some detailed information
>   (and try to get them to write something up).  If not, I guess
>   the rest of this can be ignored ;)

Compression must be a real issue to anyone on this list that will be running
product over slow WAN links, like POTS.  I think that is most here.

My dialup experience says its a must implement, the only question is how.
See below.

>2. Should compression be a seperate function (i.e. ESP, AH, 
>   Compression) or should it be optionally applied to the individual 
>   transforms as part of ESP (and AH?)?

It seems that there were opinions that said this would be a negotiated
option.  That all of the key negotiation proposals had ways of including the
compression negotiation and that a separate transform was not needed.

>3. Are compression algorithm patent issues still a problem and are
>   they enough of a problem to prevent IETF standardization?

The PPPEXT group finally went with a variance.  Discuss this with them and
the IESG for details.  It was painful, that much I remember.


Robert Moskowitz
Chrysler Corporation
(810) 758-8212