Not everything goes over the web and is gzipped.
I've been working on a project lately with 1200bps radio links that are making REST calls on the other end and 2 vs 3 bytes makes a massive difference.
I've been working on a project lately with 1200bps radio links that are making REST calls on the other end and 2 vs 3 bytes makes a massive difference.
Some of the protocols we talk over(APRS) are ASCII only(which is a bit of point B from above).
Transmissions are also signed at the radio so that they can be authenticated down the line which means that you can't easily change the payload envelope once it leaves the radio.
Our main goal is adoption and talking base64 means that lots of APIs that would take an intermediate server to do the translation aren't needed. This lowers to barrier to use and means we have a larger surface area of use cases.