I am testing firebird 2.1 traffic with Wireshark, because I am
considering using it over Internet or taking the resources to write a
middleware (which if possible, we would skip).

I have noticed that the majority of the packets in my case is about blobs.

Example:
packet nmb 1545 is "Prepare Statment" packet. I issued a
"select * from mytable"
sql command where mytable has 2 text type blob fields. The table has
about 2719 rows, the blob columns have very little data in them.

I am using Java and JDBC and I'm instantly processing the whole
resultset, saving data into objects and variables.

A few packets after the "Prepare statement" packet I get the following
packet cycle in about 20 000 - 25 000 packets:

- Open blob 2
- Response
- Get segment
- Response
- Close blob
- Response
- Open blob 2 (again)
....
and at the end:
- Free Statement
- Response
- Commit
- Response


Does using blobs cause excessive traffic?
Would traffic be smaller if I used big varchars instead?
Or is there any way to reduce traffic using blobs?


Thank you,
John