Effect of link-layer compression on TCP bandwidth

Hi,
I will really appreciate any help here:

1. What kind of tools can i use to measure TCP bandwidth
I have been using iperf, but if people have better opinions, please let me
know

2. I want to analyze what effect link-layer compression might have on TCP
bandwidth. I think i can again use Iperf for this, since link layer
compression only compresses the headers. Is this a correct assumption?

3. I want to analyze effect of link-layer compression schemes that compress
the entire packet rather than just the header. What tool can i use for
this.. or what would be the most representative streams that i can use to
get valid results.

Bear in mind that compression depends on input entropy. Hence if the packets
that are created by the tool have low entropy, they will be compressed more
resulting in smaller size and higher bandwidth, but if the packets have high
entropy, then they will be compressed less, resulting in larger size and
lesser bandwidth.


Thanks in advance.
Shashank

Don't forget to analyze latency. As long as (a) The device in question has
the computational power to (de)compress the data as fast as it can
receive/send it, and (b) the data isn't relatively random, bandwidth will
only go up. However, implementing compression on high-bandwidth,
low-latency lines is likely to have a relatively large hit in latency, which
in many instances, can actually be *more* damaging than a hit in bandwidth.

steve