A Digital Fountain Approach to Reliable Distribution of Bulk Data

TitleA Digital Fountain Approach to Reliable Distribution of Bulk Data
Publication TypeTechnical Report
Year of Publication1998
AuthorsByers, J. W., Luby M., Mitzenmacher M., & Rege A.
Other Numbers1134
Keywordsdigital fountain, Erasure Codes, FEC codes, Internet, one-way transmission, reliable broadcast, reliable multicast, satellite, Tornado codes, wireless
Abstract

The proliferation of applications that must reliably distribute bulk data to a large number of autonomous clients motivates the design of new multicast and broadcast protocols. We describe an ideal, fully scalable protocol for these applications that we call a digital fountain. A digital fountain allows any number of heterogeneous clients to acquire bulk data with optimal efficiency at times of their choosing. Moreover, no feedback channels are needed to ensure reliable delivery, even in the face of high loss rates.We develop a protocol that closely approximates a digital fountain using a new class of erasure codes that for large block sizes are orders of magnitude faster than standard erasure codes. We provide performance measurements that demonstrate the feasibility of our approach and discuss the design, implementation and performance of an experimental system.

URLhttp://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/ftp/global/pub/techreports/1998/tr-98-013.pdf
Bibliographic Notes

ICSI Technical Report TR-98-013

Abbreviated Authors

J. W. Byers, M. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, and A. Rege

ICSI Research Group

Algorithms

ICSI Publication Type

Technical Report