RE: IBM patents tunneling HTTP through another protocal

> > hmm..
> >  Wouldnt a prior work be tunneling HTTP through SSL, as
> >  originated by Netscape ?
> >  This is how https works...
> 
> Protocol tunnels have been used for at least twenty
> years.  Hard to believe IBM's develop is non-obvious
> to someone skilled in the art or that it constitutes a
> new combination of old ideas.

But the patent seems only to apply to:
"a method of increasing the performance"

Protocol tunnels for security/routing reasons wouldn't be
applicable here.

I guess tunnelling over SSL doesn't apply since there is
certainly no performance enhancement.

To prove a prior work you need to find an example of
tunnelling over a protocol which dynamically compresses??
Does AppleTalk compress?

Obviously there are other ways to increase the performance
other than compress - to use a different protocol than TCP/IP..

Anyway, is it true to say, if any performance improvements
are introduced *into* the HTTP standard, this patent doesn't
apply?

- Sean