Take a look at streaming video technologies (Windows Media, Real Video, Quicktime etc) - they've already got some of the world's top brains looking at the best ways to stream image data over networks...

...the fact that they're animating the frames and you're not shouldn't matter. Though frame to frame coherence is where some of their compression comes from - so if each of your images is very different, you won't be get near their promised rates.

At very least, knowing the maximum rate something like WMV/ASX can transmit a video only stream at will give you an upper bound to aim for with your own technology (if you don't want to use off the shelf stuff).


In terms of compression:

- which "standard" image compression scheme is best depends on exactly what each image contains. For photographs, JPEG will likely be best, but don't blindly use that and expect it to be best for all image types - for hand drawn cartoons or things like faxes there are better methods.

- whether JPEG compression will be too slow depends on what CPU your target hardware contains, and what the speed of your socket connection is. You'll have to look at the figures for your target hardware and see if JPEG encoding is going to be (on average) slower than sending the data byte-for-byte - there isn't a yes/no answer to that question - if you're on a fast LAN with a slow CPU, then maybe sending the data raw is better, in other cases maybe not...

- if this is for a custom system, have you considered a hardware MPEG encoder?

- if the images are computer generated (including artwork drawn on a computer) rather than being sampled/scanned from a real world source, then take a look at the filtering schemes contained in PNG - combine that with the traditional streaming ZLIB stuff or even just RLE.