Is it worth using MYSQLI_CLIENT_COMPRESS when the db is on another machine?

Question

I have two machines on amazon ec2, one with a drupal installation and another one with the mysql database. I wonder if it's worth to patch drupal to activate mysql client compression. Are there any caveats?

Answer 1

yes, esp. when the queries return hundreds of text records. ASCII compression is around 90%. If you returned 1MB of ASCII records, compressed will result in 100k. Plus, compression can be done on-the-fly, so you'll notice an increase in latency by microseconds, but you'll have less data to push through the wire.