Network, Computer and Programming Resources

Network - Protocol, CSLIP (Compressed Serial

Line Interface Protocol) CSLIP is a variant of the Serial Line Interface Protocol (SLIP), which is used when transmitting IP (Internet Protocol) packets over serial connections such as phone lines. SLIP and CSLIP are used to encapsulate the IP packets when accessing the Internet over a serial line. CSLIP uses a compressed packet header and so has less overhead than ordinary SLIP. The compression strategy-known as Van Jacobson compression, after its developer- works by transmitting only differences between successive packets. This makes it possible, in the case of a CSLIP packet, to reduce the header from 24 bytes to 5. While this overhead savings may be only a small percentage of the entire file, it can save a considerable number of bytes when a long document is being transmitted-particularly if the document contains many small packets. PRIMARY SOURCES The SLIP protocol is discussed in RFC 1055. Van Jacobson compression is described in RFC 1141.