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Van Jacobson TCP/IP Header Compression

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Karn (talk | contribs) at 23:23, 11 May 2007 (helps low speed links, but doesn't improve modem processing delays). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Van Jacobson TCP/IP Header Compression is a data compression protocol described in RFC 1144, specifically designed to improve TCP/IP performance over slow serial links developed by Van Jacobson. Van Jacobson compression reduces the normal 40 byte TCP/IP packet headers down to 3-4 bytes for the average case. It does this by saving the state of TCP connections at both ends of a link, and only sending the differences in the header fields that change. This makes a very big difference for interactive performance on low speed links, although it will not do anything about the processing delay inherent to most dialup modems.

Van Jacobson Header Compression (also VJ compression, or just Header Compression) is an option in most versions of PPP. Versions of SLIP with VJ compression are often called CSLIP (Compressed SLIP).

  • RFC 1144