ietf-822
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: LZJU90 compression example(s)

1998-09-21 14:00:15
    "Memory is cheap;  bandwidth is cheaper"
 
With all due respect to Nathaniel, he got this one wrong.   ... 
 
        Yahh ... that's what I thought too when I first heard it. 
And then,  I wasn't sure if he was speaking tongue-in-cheek or some such. 
Eventually I decided it had something to do with economics,  programmer 
cost,  and annoying things like that.   So I only use it here as a prod. 
 
        ;-)    I truly hate the budget limits I get stuck in. 
 
I suggest you try it before making such assumptions. 
 
        Fair enough. 
 
I also have to run on a
wide range of platforms, and while I've not used zlib in production (yet), 
I have used it and found it to be very portable indeed.
 
        I don't want us to make the same mistake that was made with 
the web stuff in its adolescence.   A lot of the focus was on libwww 
rather than on the protocol.   It is completely legitimate to advocate 
a widely available, highly portable code base,  but it is wrong 
to design new protocols based on any single code base.   Right? 
 
        To be honest,  I'm not aware of any protocol problems that 
resulted from standardization on libwww.   But the goal is interoperability, 
not compatibility.   Another quote:  "rough concensus and running code" 
-- Dave Clark    Unlike code sets that talk are better than like code 
sets whether they talk or not. 
 
                              Ned
 
        But ... back to Nathaniel's quote ... 
 
        I really am inclined to NOT advocate compression in MIME. 
Just as we might wrap SMTP in SSL,  so I'd prefer to layer the 
compression on-top-of the transaction.   So even though bandwidth is 
not as cheap as NSB's cute quote implies,  it may be wise to think of it 
as cheap when augmenting MIME and deal with the need for compression 
at a different level. 
 
        This is NOT to say that we should  "put off" 
addressing the problem.   Just that we should divi-up the work. 
Think of bandwidth as cheap in the context of the mail message. 
Think of it as cheap insofar as  >not worrying about<  "oh my, 
we need to cope with such-and-such current technology"  to the end 
that we add another vestigial feature. 
 
-- 
Rick Troth at La Casita, Houston, Texas, USA 
"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."