Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!cs.pitt.edu!jonathan
From: jonathan@cs.pitt.edu (Jonathan Eunice)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Uses of V.42 (bis?) data compression
Summary: Another neat idea that won't work
Message-ID: <10387@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 91 17:25:22 GMT
Sender: news@cs.pitt.edu
Organization: University of Pittsburgh Computer Science
Lines: 18

It looks like my idea of using modems with V.42 compression as a
general-purpose compression engine is going to achieve naught.

Several people warned me that V.42, while a nice optimization, is
little more.  Most implementations will give compression ratios and
speeds substantially inferior to that of host based compression.  The
speed of communications with the modem appears to be a major
bottleneck, as the fastest the host and modem can typically communicate
is far below the compression rate of a program like compress or PKZIP
running on any reasonable platform.  V.42 also lacks the handy
mutli-file bundling and CRC error checking of some host-based
archive/compress packages.

Oh, well.  It was just an idea.  I expect to have more of them in the
future.  Perhaps some will pan out, making be rich and famous beyond
my wildest imaginings.  Just not this one.

jse