Information on Microcom Networking Protocols Class 5
Microcom Networking Protocols Class 5·is one of the error correction
and data compression protocols developed by the modem manufacturer Microcom.
MNP
Class 5 provide a data compression protocol that
can increase throughput by up to 200%.
Microcom Networking Protocols Class 5 yields data compression rations of between 1.3:1 and 2:1
using two data compression algorithms:
Huffman encoding is used to re-encode
ASCII characters. Frequently used characters such as a, e, and
s are encoded using only 4 bits, whereas rarely occurring
characters such as x or z are encoded using as
many as 11 bits. Overall, the effect of Huffman encoding
is that more characters are transmitted using fewer bits.
Run-length encoding
examines a data stream in search of repeating characters. When
a character repeats more than three times, the algorithm replaces
the entire string of repeated characters with only three repetitions
of the character followed by a count field indicating how
many times the character is actually repeated. For example, 10
repeated characters would be sent as 4 characters (3 characters
+ 1-byte count).
Other topics in our resources on Modems related to Microcom Networking Protocols Class 5 include: