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Re: TO COMPRESS OR NOT TO CMPRS (please reply)

To: Derek Palma <dpalma@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: TO COMPRESS OR NOT TO CMPRS (please reply)
From: carrel@ipsec.org
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:00:20 -0800
cc: Germano Caronni <caronni@tik.ee.ethz.ch>, dharkins@cisco.com (Daniel Harkins), rmonsour@earthlink.net, ipsec@tis.com
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:39:09 PST." <3.0.32.19970218082333.00e166c8@netcom.com>
Sender: owner-ipsec@ex.tis.com

> I agree. Compression is beneficial.  At the very least it is able to
> compensate for IPSEC overhead which is nice in both end systems and
> intermediate
> systems.

Er, no.  "At the very least" compression provides no benefit in packet size
and increases computational load.  (I'm not sure if I'm correcting your
colloquial english or your understanding of compression.)  There is no
guaranteed compression.  In the case of interactive traffic like telnet,
compression will have very little benefit.  In the case of ftp data traffic
(large MTU sized packets), compression _may_ save you from having to
fragment when encrypting.  But only if the data is not already compressed.
In the case of ftp, data IS quite often already compressed.

Now don't get me wrong.  I'd like to see the ability to support
compression.  (Life is more than telnet and ftp.)  But don't assume its a
panacea.

Dave

References:

Re: TO COMPRESS OR NOT TO CMPRS (please reply)

From: Derek Palma <dpalma@netcom.com>

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