International Business Machines Corporation

Lawrence Steven Evans

Graham Derek Wallis

Michael I Roper

Andrew Key

Vincent Sethi

Anthony Fyles

Michael Ian Roper

Computers are linked together to form a network. Messages are sent over the links between the computers in compressed, segmented form, the size of the segments being appropriate to the transmission characteristics of the link. A message previously received or transmitted by a computer is stored in compressed and segmented form. If it is desired to forward or re-transmit this message, the segment size of the stored form is compared against the optimum segment size for the link over which the message is to be sent. If there is a close match, then the stored segmented, compressed message is retrieved for direct transmittal, without having to resegment or recompress the message.

Method and apparatus for optimizing message transmission

A computer workstation runs an application 12 which generates data for transmission over a network. The workstation includes a communications subsystem 14 which is responsible for actually sending data generated by the application onto the network. The application therefore passes data 22 for sending to the communications subsystem, along with the identification 24 of the channel over which that data is to be sent, and compression information 26. In a first embodiment the communications subsystem contains a variety of compression routines 40, and the compression information indicates which of these routines is most appropriate for the data in question. In a second embodiment, the compression information is a call-back function 92, whereby the communications subsystem can call back to the application program to perform the compression itself.

Computer workstation

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Basingstoke, United Kingdom

Lawrence Steven Evans