Publication Details
Title: A Digital Fountain Approach to Reliable Distribution of Bulk Data
Author: J. W. Byers, M. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, and A. Rege
Group: ICSI Technical Reports
Date: May 1998
PDF: ftp://ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu/pub/techreports/1998/tr-98-013.pdf
Overview:
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. Keywords: erasure codes, Tornado codes, FEC codes, digital fountain, reliable multicast, reliable broadcast, one-way transmission, satellite, wireless, Internet
Bibliographic Information:
ICSI Technical Report TR-98-013
Bibliographic Reference:
J. W. Byers, M. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, and A. Rege. A Digital Fountain Approach to Reliable Distribution of Bulk Data. ICSI Technical Report TR-98-013, May 1998
Author: J. W. Byers, M. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, and A. Rege
Group: ICSI Technical Reports
Date: May 1998
PDF: ftp://ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu/pub/techreports/1998/tr-98-013.pdf
Overview:
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. Keywords: erasure codes, Tornado codes, FEC codes, digital fountain, reliable multicast, reliable broadcast, one-way transmission, satellite, wireless, Internet
Bibliographic Information:
ICSI Technical Report TR-98-013
Bibliographic Reference:
J. W. Byers, M. Luby, M. Mitzenmacher, and A. Rege. A Digital Fountain Approach to Reliable Distribution of Bulk Data. ICSI Technical Report TR-98-013, May 1998