On Thursday 31 Jul 2003 21:39, Menno Jonkers wrote:

> I don't think it'll be worth it. Stick to the compression algorithm
> that's readily available in Java. Focus the scarce development resources
> on things that can really make a difference, e.g. routing. Once the core
> functionality is okay, you can start looking at these kind of
> optimizations.

The probem with "looking at these kind of optimizations" is that every time 
the compression algorithm is changed, the network will break for all the 
people who have nodes that don't support it. This means that there would have 
to be a potentially rather long transition period where both methods would 
have to be supported, at least on the decompression side. But even if the new 
nodes are restricted to zip instead of bzip2, the old nodes that haven't been 
updated will find the content compressed with the new algorithm unreadable.

This effectively means it would require all the nodes to be updated and all 
the data to be re-inserted, effectively tearing down the network and starting 
from scratch.

Granted, with a long transition period, it would probably work out without too 
much disruption, but at the same time, I must say that I am in favour of 
getting it right the first time, rather than having to either fix things 
later at an increased cost or just putting up with the sub-optimal 
performance.

Gordan
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