RFC 3173 (rfc3173) - Page 1 of 13
IP Payload Compression Protocol (IPComp)
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group A. Shacham
Request for Comments: 3173 Juniper
Obsoletes: 2393 B. Monsour
Category: Standards Track Consultant
R. Pereira
Cisco
M. Thomas
Consultant
September 2001
IP Payload Compression Protocol (IPComp)
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a protocol intended to provide lossless
compression for Internet Protocol datagrams in an Internet
environment.
1. Introduction
IP payload compression is a protocol to reduce the size of IP
datagrams. This protocol will increase the overall communication
performance between a pair of communicating hosts/gateways ("nodes")
by compressing the datagrams, provided the nodes have sufficient
computation power, through either CPU capacity or a compression
coprocessor, and the communication is over slow or congested links.
IP payload compression is especially useful when encryption is
applied to IP datagrams. Encrypting the IP datagram causes the data
to be random in nature, rendering compression at lower protocol
layers (e.g., PPP Compression Control Protocol [RFC 1962])
ineffective. If both compression and encryption are required,
compression must be applied before encryption.
Shacham, et al. Standards Track