[lug] ssh compression

[D. Stimits]

Bear Giles wrote:
> 
> > The bandwidth that it is consuming is killing me.  Is there any way to
> > throttle it down?  Would using the compression option in ssh help me or
> > hurt me (the man page says it would slow it down, but I don't know if
> > that means less bandwidth, longer download or same bandwidth, longer
> > download).
> 
> It takes computing power to compress and decompress the data stream,
> but unless your system is heavily loaded you'll almost always have
> faster transmissions with compression than not with reasonably modern
> hardware and anything under T1.  If you were doing this on a 100 Mbps
> LAN, compression might not be worth the trouble.

I agree with this one, wanted to add that the real penalty that they
talk about, assuming your system is not already cpu limited, is latency.
Compression improves the network by sending less data, at the cost of
more computing power, and also at the cost that the data will be
slightly slower at arriving relative to when it was requested. That
isn't a problem with backups and downloads and such, it might annoy
someone using an interactive shell or application.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com