How well would Alfresco handle large file transfers? We are needing to use Alfresco as a sort of extranet and have clients upload very large datasets. These files would be anywhere from 1-5 GB.
I don't know of any recommendation for compression. And any such recommendation would be highly dependent upon your infrastructure and data rather than being a feature of Alfresco.
Personally I don't like compression at the application level since it complicates the application design and often prevents the lower level network services from being able to do their own compression.
I'd recommend you do some tests on your own environment to measure the difference compression makes.
I've tested a very small amount of data on our own network its works perfect with alfresco and I hope if compress more heavy files it should works same. Happy with the infrastructure its fully compatible.