Lossless Message Compression

Abstract: In this thesis we investigated whether using compression when sending inter-process communication (IPC) messages can be beneficial or not. A literature study on lossless compression resulted in a compilation of algorithms and techniques. Using this compilation, the algorithms LZO, LZFX, LZW, LZMA, bzip2 and LZ4 were selected to be integrated into LINX as an extra layer to support lossless message compression. The testing involved sending messages with real telecom data between two nodes on a dedicated network, with different network configurations and message sizes. To calculate the effective throughput for each algorithm, the round-trip time was measured. We concluded that the fastest algorithms, i.e. LZ4, LZO and LZFX, were most efficient in our tests.