Copying files with on-the-fly compression

having to copy a really big file in the shortest time, this might be useful:

gzip -1 </path/to/sourcefile | ssh -c blowfish-cbc target.host gunzip ">" /path/to/destfile

the light compression (-1) seems to be a good tradeoff: higher compression ratios lead to higher overall transfer time.
the blowfish encryption puts lower strain on the cpu.
using an old 10 Mbit connection, i've copied a vm disk file with a throughput of 13.980.000 bytes/sec