🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1jvjuvINN8l6@ftp.UU.NET> news@gvc.com (News Administrator) writes:

> [ modem compression on or off for news? ]

>I'm most interested in hard data on PEP, TurboPEP and V32bis/V42bis.

I run a Sun3 news system at home.  Here's what I discovered:

Compressing a compressed file results in a 50% slow-down.  Why?
Because compression is not magic, it is the removal of entropy and once
you remove all of the entropy you can't remove any more.
[ How's that for over-simplying a very difficult mathematical concept? ]

(BTW, I knew that was going to be the result but I was trying to figure
out if PEP would automatically shut off compression if the compression
ratio was really bad.  It doesn't.  Maybe TurboPEP does? ]

So, who should lead us to the question, "So, should my Sun3 do the
compression or should I leave it up to my modem?"

I expected it to be better to off-load the dirty work to the modem,
since my Sun3 is so slow.  However, I found that the 2x bytes going
through the serial port slowed things down worse than running
"compress" on the Sun3.

That's my view.  Your mileage may vary.

Tom
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)

Unix is a trademark of, WHATT????