Question about mysqldump

Hi.

I had a problem with mysqldump where a max_allowed_packet error occurred
on the Attachments table.
The myslqdump cron command I had was:

02 23 * * * cd /home/ticket/dbbackups &&
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump --opt --skip-extended-insert
–skip-lock-tables --single-transaction --complete-insert
–max_allowed_packet=32M rt3 | bzip2 -9 > rt3.out-date +\%Y\%m\%d-\%H.bz2

the error was:
mysqldump: Error 2020: Got packet bigger than ‘max_allowed_packet’ bytes
when dumping table Attachments at row: 1784599

inserting the ‘–default-character-set=binary’ directive as in:

02 23 * * * cd /home/ticket/dbbackups &&
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump --opt --skip-extended-insert
–skip-lock-tables --single-transaction --complete-insert
–max_allowed_packet=32M --default-character-set=binary rt3 | bzip2 -9 >
rt3.out-date +\%Y\%m\%d-\%H.bz2

prevented the error from occurring, but the dump file is somewhat
smaller and the dump completed somewhat earlier.

Does anyone have experience with adding this directive and can comment
on the size of the file and completion time before and after?
Is the earlier completion and smaller dump-file size a cause for concern?

Any help greatly appreciated.
Kind regards.

Luke Vanderfluit.
Analyst/Programmer.
Internode Systems Pty. Ltd.