Application-based compression

A communication system and methods for data compression and the management of data transmitted between computing devices in a communication network are provided. Compression dictionaries generated from data previously maintained at a recipient computing device and a transmitting computing device are maintained at each respective device. The compression dictionaries are made up of fixed length data chunks from the data previously maintained on the computing device that can be matched to data to be compressed or de-compressed. Data can be transmitted without requiring the exchange of the compression dictionaries between the recipient computing device and the transmitting computing device.