Patent ID: 7430331

Claim:
A method of compressing data with a compression device having a shared phrase library for a plurality of different decompression devices of a network, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of data streams with a plurality of compression units of a compression device; storing data phrases received by any of the compression units in the shared phrase library of the compression device, wherein each of the data phrases comprises a set of sequential data symbols received within one of the plurality of data streams; synchronizing the shared phrase library with decompression dictionaries within the decompression devices by sending one or more sets of library phrases associated with the repeated data phrases with a plurality of transmission units of the compression device to the plurality of decompression devices, wherein each of the transmission units is associated with a different one of the compression units; detecting repeated data phrases in the received data streams with the compression units; and outputting a compressed data stream with one of the plurality of transmission units to a respective decompression device in which the repeated data phrases are replaced with identifiers for data phrases previously output in the compressed data stream.