A method and apparatus is disclosed for balancing throughput and compression in a network communication system. A message is received. A first compression mechanism is applied to the message to generate a first compressed message, where applying the first compression mechanism comprises gathering compression information. Based on the compression information, a compression metric associated with the first compressed message is computed. The compression metric is compared to a threshold value. A second compression mechanism is applied to the first compressed message to generate a second compressed message only when the compression metric does not exceed the threshold value. The second compressed message is then transmitted.