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network-compression-threshold

You can change the server’s network compression threshold in server.properties - it has a default value of 256:

network-compression-threshold=256
Section titled “Recommended starting values”

If you have a good internet connection and a good bandwidth:

network-compression-threshold=512

If you have a poor internet connection or limited bandwidth:

network-compression-threshold=256

If you are playing on a LAN or all players have a good, unlimited internet connection, you can disable compression altogether:

network-compression-threshold=-1

What is network-compression-threshold?

Section titled “What is network-compression-threshold?”

The network compression threshold is the size in bytes beyond which packets start to be compressed by the minecraft server.

So, if you set it to 512, any packet larger than 512 bytes will be compressed before being sent to the client over the internet.

The benefits of compression

Section titled “The benefits of compression”

Just like if you’ve ever had to send a large file over email, for example, compressing a file means less data sent over the network. That means:

  • reducing the network usage (so network speed is less of an issue)
  • reducing bandwidth costs (if your hosting provider charges you for data transfer)
  • potentially even reducing latency (so players experience less lag)

Also, if you have any players on poor internet connections, compression will mean that you can send them larger packets without overwhelming their connection.

The downsides of compression

Section titled “The downsides of compression”

The main downside is that it uses CPU power to compress and decompress packets. This means that if the value is lower (more packets get compressed), it will use more CPU power.

In most cases, this is not a problem, as modern CPUs are very good at compression. However, if your server is already CPU-bound (by that, I mean the cpu is the main bottleneck for performance), then lowering this value too much could make performance worse.

Another downside is that compressing very small packets can actually make them larger, due to the overhead of the compression algorithm. This is why setting the threshold too low can be counterproductive - I’d never recommend going any lower than 128 bytes.