Quickly transmitting large datasets in the context of distributed computing on wide area networks can be achieved by compressing data before transmission. However, such an approach is not efficient when dealing with higher speed networks. Indeed, the time to compress a large file and to send it is greater than the time to send the uncompressed file. In this paper, we explore and enhance an algorithm that allows us to overlap communications with compression and to automatically adapt the compression effort to currently available network and processor resources.