[e2e] Technology marches forward at the expense of the net?

[Tarik Alj]

On Thursday 13 December 2001 17:43, you wrote:
> I know a little about Digital Fountain's technological basis.  Essentially,
> it uses source coding to transmit a file in such a way that any random
> sample of its coded stream that contains as many correct bits as the
> original file can be used to reconstruct the file.
>
> So they can send a file by "blasting" at whatever rate they want, and any
> packets that happen to get through will contribute to the final
> file.  (this only works, of course, because the code essentially covers the
> whole file as a unit).


- Would it be possible to evaluate in what proportion, on the average, a 
packet that gets through will contribute to the final file? 

- In other words how much bandwidth is wasted by applying FEC at such a high 
level?

- what about sequences of small file transfers, such as web pages? 


>
> This has the nice property of separating congestion control from
> retransmission control, so the two are independent.
>
>

-Tarik.

Tarik Alj 
INRS-Telecommunications