A digital fountain approach to reliable distribution of bulk data

TLDR

The proliferation of applications that must reliably distribute bulk data to many 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. The protocol uses a new class of fast erasure codes that eliminate the need for feedback, enabling reliable delivery even under high loss, and is implemented in an experimental system whose performance measurements confirm feasibility. The approach delivers optimal‑efficiency bulk data to any number of heterogeneous clients, requires no feedback even under high loss, and is supported by fast erasure codes and experimental performance measurements that confirm its feasibility.

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.