Here are the latest results on compression ratios for the first 295,000 blocks, compressionlevel=6.  I think there are more than enough datapoints for statistical significance. 

Results are very much similar to the previous test.   I'll work on getting a comparison between how much time savings/loss in time there is when syncing the blockchains: compressed vs uncompressed.  Still, I think it's clear that serving up compressed blocks, at least historical blocks, will be of benefit for those that have bandwidth caps on their internet connections.

The proposal, so far is fairly simple:
1) compress blocks with some compression library: currently zlib but I can investigate other possiblities
2) As a fall back we need to advertise compression as a service.  That way we can turn off compression AND decompression completely if needed.
3) Do the compression at the datastream level in the code.  CDataStream is the obvious place.


Test Results:

range = block size range
ubytes = average size of uncompressed blocks
cbytes = average size of compressed blocks
ctime = average time to compress
dtime = average time to decompress
cmp_ratio% = compression ratio
datapoints = number of datapoints taken

range       ubytes    cbytes    ctime    dtime    cmp_ratio%    datapoints
0-250b      215            189    0.001    0.000    12.40             91280
250-500b    438            404    0.001    0.000    7.85             13217
500-1KB     761            701    0.001    0.000    7.86               11434
1KB-10KB    4149    3547    0.001    0.000      14.51             52180
10KB-100KB  41934    32604    0.005    0.001    22.25         82890
100KB-200KB 146303    108080    0.016    0.001    26.13    29886
200KB-300KB 243299    179281    0.025    0.002    26.31    25066
300KB-400KB 344636    266177    0.036    0.003    22.77    4956
400KB-500KB 463201    356862    0.046    0.004    22.96    3167
500KB-600KB 545123    429854    0.056    0.005    21.15    366
600KB-700KB 647736    510931    0.065    0.006    21.12    254
700KB-800KB 746540    587287    0.073    0.008    21.33    294
800KB-900KB 868121    682650    0.087    0.008    21.36    199
900KB-1MB   945747    726307    0.091    0.010    23.20    304

On 10/11/2015 8:46 AM, Jeff Garzik via bitcoin-dev wrote:
Comments:

1) cblock seems a reasonable way to extend the protocol.  Further wrapping should probably be done at the stream level.

2) zlib has crappy security track record.

3) A fallback path to non-compressed is required, should compression fail or crash.

4) Most blocks and transactions have runs of zeroes and/or highly common bit-patterns, which contributes to useful compression even at smaller sizes.  Peter Ts's most recent numbers bear this out.  zlib has a dictionary (32K?) which works well with repeated patterns such as those you see with concatenated runs of transactions.

5) LZO should provide much better compression, at a cost of CPU performance and using a less-reviewed, less-field-tested library.





On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Tier Nolan via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:


On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Peter Tschipper <peter.tschipper@gmail.com> wrote:
There are better ways of sending new blocks, that's certainly true but for sending historical blocks and seding transactions I don't think so.  This PR is really designed to save bandwidth and not intended to be a huge performance improvement in terms of time spent sending.
If the main point is for historical data, then sticking to just blocks is the best plan.

Since small blocks don't compress well, you could define a "cblocks" message that handles multiple blocks (just concatenate the block messages as payload before compression). 

The sending peer could combine blocks so that each cblock is compressing at least 10kB of block data (or whatever is optimal).  It is probably worth specifying a maximum size for network buffer reasons (either 1MB or 1 block maximum).

Similarly, transactions could be combined together and compressed "ctxs".  The inv messages could be modified so that you can request groups of 10-20 transactions.  That would depend on how much of an improvement compressed transactions would represent.

More generally, you could define a message which is a compressed message holder.  That is probably to complex to be worth the effort though.

 

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 5:40 AM, Johnathan Corgan via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 5:58 PM, gladoscc via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
 
I think 25% bandwidth savings is certainly considerable, especially for people running full nodes in countries like Australia where internet bandwidth is lower and there are data caps.
​ This reinforces the idea that such trade-off decisions should be be local and negotiated between peers, not a required feature of the network P2P.​
 

--
Johnathan Corgan
Corgan Labs - SDR Training and Development Services

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