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Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 2394
Category: Informational
R. Pereira
TimeStep Corporation
December 1998

IP Payload Compression Using DEFLATE

Status of this Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This document describes a compression method based on the DEFLATE compression algorithm. This document defines the application of the DEFLATE algorithm to the IP Payload Compression Protocol.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction...................................................2
     1.1 The DEFLATE Compression Algorithm...........................2
     1.2 Licensing...................................................2
     1.3 Specification of Requirements...............................3
   2. DEFLATE Algorithm Implementation...............................3
     2.1 Compression.................................................3
     2.2 Decompression...............................................4
   3. Thresholds.....................................................4
   4. IPSec Transform Identifier.....................................4
   5. Security Considerations........................................4
   6. References.....................................................5
   7. Acknowledgments................................................5
   8. Editor's Address...............................................5
   9. Full Copyright Statement.......................................6

1. Introduction

The IP Payload Compression Protocol allows the compression of IP datagrams by supporting different compression algorithms. This document describes how to integrate the DEFLATE compression algorithm [Deutsch96] into IPCOMP [IPCOMP].

This document SHOULD be read in conjunction with [IPCOMP] and MUST be taken in its context.

1.1 The DEFLATE Compression Algorithm

The 'deflate' compression format [Deutsch96], as used by the PKZIP and gzip compressors and as embodied in the freely and widely distributed zlib [Gailly95] library source code, has the following features:

  • an apparently unencumbered encoding and compression algorithm, with an open and publicly-available specification.
  • low-overhead escape mechanism for incompressible data. The PPP Deflate specification offers options to reduce that overhead further.
  • heavily used for many years in networks, on modem and other point- to-point links to transfer files for personal computers and workstations.
  • easily achieves 2:1 compression on the Calgary corpus [Corpus90] using less than 64KBytes of memory on both sender and receive.

1.2 Licensing

The zlib source is widely and freely available, subject to the following copyright:

(C) 1995 Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

  1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
  1. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source

distribution. 

         Jean-Loup Gailly        Mark Adler
         gzip@prep.ai.mit.edu    madler@alumni.caltech.edu

If you use the zlib library in a product, we would appreciate *not* receiving lengthy legal documents to sign. The sources are provided for free but without warranty of any kind. The library has been entirely written by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler; it does not include third-party code.

The deflate format and compression algorithm are based on Lempel-Ziv LZ77 compression; extensive research has been done by the GNU Project and the Portable Network Graphics working group supporting its patent free status.

1.3 Specification of Requirements

The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" that appear in this document are to be interpreted as described in [Bradner97].

2. DEFLATE Algorithm Implementation

The DEFLATE compression algorithm was designed by Phil Katz and its details are publicly available in [Deutsch96]. Thus it is a good freely available algorithm to implement within IPCOMP.

Compression and decompression algorithm details should be followed as outlined in [Deutsch96] or the use of a software library may be preferable. Since IPComp is a stateless protocol, history MUST be cleared between packets when either compressing or decompressing.

2.1 Compression

As defined in [IPCOMP], the compression process is determined by the IP Compression Association (IPCA). The IPCA MUST define the DEFLATE algorithm for the process within this document to take place.

The compression process entails compressing the data from the IP datagram and placing the result after the IPComp header. For example, compressing a TCP datagram; 

   Before:  IP TCP ...
   After:   IP IPCOMP (TCP ...)

Please note how everything after the IPCOMP header is compressed.

DEFLATE allows for a number of compression levels ranging from best compression but slow to fast compression. The level that one compresses data is implementation dependant since it is always compatible with the decompression algorithm.

2.2 Decompression

As in the compression process, the IPCA defines the parameters and algorithm to utilize for the decompression process.

As defined in [IPCOMP] the data after the IPComp header is decompressed and replaces the IPComp header within the IP header.

Decompression using the DEFLATE algorithm follows the decompression process defined in [Deutsch96].

3. Thresholds

As stated in [IPCOMP], compression on small buffers does not usually work as well as on fast links since the time it takes to compress is slower than the time to transport the data. Informal tests show that the average buffer size that produces larger results is around 90 bytes. Thus implementations SHOULD NOT attempt to compress buffers smaller than 90 bytes.

Other than a packet size limit, no compressibility test as defined in [IPCOMP] is outlined in this document.

4. IPSec Transform Identifier

[IPDOI] states that the ISAKMP IPCOMP transform ID for the DEFLATE compression algorithm is IPCOMP_DEFLATE. No other ISAKMP parameters are required for the IPCOMP DEFLATE algorithm.

5. Security Considerations

This document does not add any further security considerations that [IPCOMP] and [Deutsch96] have already declared.

6. References

   [IPCOMP]    Shacham, A., Monsour, R., Pereira, R., and M. Thomas, "IP
               Payload Compression Protocol (IPComp)", RFC 2393,
               December 1998.
   
   [Deutsch96] Deutsch, P., "DEFLATE Compressed Data Format
               Specification version 1.3", RFC 1951, May 1996.
   
   [IPDOI]     Piper, D., "The Internet IP Security Domain of
               Interpretation for ISAKMP", RFC 2407, November 1998.
   
   [Corpus90]  Bell, T.C., Cleary, G. G. and Witten, I.H., "Text
               Compression", Prentice_Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1990.
               The compression corpus itself can be found in
               ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/
   
   [Gailly95]  Gailly, J.-L., "Zlib 0.95 beta"

7. Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank all of the active members of the IPPCP working group especially Abraham Shacham and Naganand Doraswamy.

8. Editor's Address

Roy Pereira
TimeStep Corporation 

   Phone: +1 (613) 599-3610 x 4808
   EMail: rpereira@timestep.com

The IP Payload Compression Protocol (IPPCP) working group can be contacted via email (ippcp@cisco.com) or through its chair:

Naganand Dorswamy
Bay Networks

EMail: 

          naganand@baynetworks.com

9. Full Copyright Statement

Copyright © The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.