Description of Problem: RHN at least with client 2.7.4 does not compress the rpm headers before downloading them, as it does with the listPackages info. Without modifing the client, the server could compress the headers and have the normal cgiwrap decompression work by setting the Content-Type to "application/compressed-octet- stream" This is probably only important for modem connected users, as most headers are not that large.
This is a known issue. The compression can't be initiated from the server side since it would break old clients. The client has to explicitly say it wishes the headers to be compressed, but this would trigger another bug in python's socket module. We should be able to turn compression on for the new clients, though.
misa, please take care of this issue
The header is already a compact binary representation, I will have to run some benchmarks to see how well a header compresses. listPacakages is a different beast, its output is XML, and XML compresses well (IIRC, from 100k to 16k).
Header is already a compact binary representation... Shall we close this???
Sure (it was a suggestion, not a bug report) In playing around here, there's _is_ an advantage to compressing the headers, but it would only be noticable on modem lines.