This variable determines the type of data compression performed at the internal socket layer. AGS_SOCKET_COMPRESS must be set before any socket communication is done, and cannot be changed via SET ENVIRONMENT. This variable has three possible values:
| NONE | This is the default setting. When AGS_SOCKET_COMPRESS is set to this value, no compression is performed. |
| ZLIB | When AGS_SOCKET_COMPRESS is set to this value, socket data is compressed using the same algorithm as the gzip compression utility. |
| RUNLENGTH | When AGS_SOCKET_COMPRESS is set to this value, simple compression is done, based on counting repeated bytes of data. |
RUNLENGTH compression tends to be very fast, while ZLIB compression tends to compress the data more, but is slower as a result.
Windows supports ZLIB compression, but not all UNIX machines do. For those machines that do not, RUNLENGTH compression will be used whether this variable is set to ZLIB or RUNLENGTH. When the compression algorithm is being negotiated with a server, the method that both machines support will be used.