Technologies for performing controlled bandwidth expansion are described. For example, a storage server can receive a request from a client to read compressed data. The storage server can obtain individual storage units of the compressed data. The storage server can also obtain a compressed size and an uncompressed size for each of the storage units. The storage server can generate network packet content comprising the storage units and associated padding such that the size of the padding for a given storage is based on the uncompressed and compressed sizes of the given storage unit. The storage server can send the network packet content to the client in one or more network packets. The client can receive the network packets, discard the padding, and decompress the compressed data from the storage units.