36. Compress an IP packet

If we looked at the format of an IP packet below (image was taken from Internet), we could see that the Frame Header, IP header, and UDP header have occupied lots of space in an IP packet.

In some cases, the IP header contains the (main) IP address of the gateway and then the subnet IP address of the sender or receiver. This would leave little room for data in an IP packet.

Each network or relay node(s) would need to unpack an IP packet for the contained IP address in order to relay or pick it up.

If we could compress the entire IP packet except the Frame Header/Footer and main IP address or gateway IP address, this would give more room for the packet data. Internet networks would deliver IP packets based on its gateway IP address. The gateway would pick up the packet; decompress its contents including subnet IP, which could be encoded, and then deliver to its final destination or subnet.

By keeping the destination gateway IP and frame header/footer intact, this protocol offers backward compatibility to previous version of IP packets. New system would determine if a packet was compressed or not based on “included characters”. Gateway address, subnet IP address, and UDP address contain a specific “numeric” format.