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

[Bob Monsour <[e-mail]>]

At 09:22 AM 2/19/97 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>I see you haven't heard of SSL, eh?

I am very aware of SSL (and it provides support for compressing prior to
encrypting).

>Certainly at 28.8kbps the added CPU burden is unnoticeable, so why
>*not* encrypt everything?

The issue for doing the work is less a burden for the client than it is for
the server. I completely agree that at the client end, the overhead is
unnoticeable. However, at the server/aggregation points for all these
clients, the workload would be substantial, if not overwhelming (i.e.,
without hardware assist). This is true in the case for compression today.
In some routers that support PPP compression today, if the load on the
router becomes too great so that the network pipe can't be kept saturated,
the compression is turned off.

-Bob