Question: merit / feasibility of compressing frontend <--> backend transfers w/ zlib

Hello,
I'm new to the list, and just started working as an intern at
commandprompt.com.

As one of my first projects I'm been asked to compress with zlib
(www.gzip.org/zlib ) data flowing from postgres clients to and
especially from the backend server. Our first idea was to write a sort
of 'compression proxy' with a frontend and backend of its own. The
postgres client would connect to the compression frontend on their local
machine which would compress and transfer to the compresss backend on
the server. Decompressed requests would be forwared to the postgres
server. This idea was abandoned since: 1.) it means existing clients
would have to be reconfigured to talk to their local machine, and 2.) it
destroys host based authentication since all packets arriving at the
sever would be from the local decompressor.

The current idea is to rewrite parts of postgres itself, both the
frontend libpq and the backend, so that a "compress" option could be
passed by the client. After the startup packet and authentication all
subsequent queries and responses would be compressed (and decompressed
when received).

My questions are: Is there any merit to this idea? i.e would
compressing large result sets decrease the transfer time? and, How
easy or difficult would it be to incorporate such change into the
postgres frontend and backend source?

Any help appreciated,

Robert Flory
using psql-general(at)commandprompt(dot)com