File Broadcast

[John Ioannidis]

>In article <45509 at apple.Apple.COM> erekose at apple.com (Erik Scheelke) writes:
>
> We have a local area network of UNIX based PCs running TCP-IP, and I
> was asked if there was any software that will broadcast a file to all
> machines on the network.  I didn't know of any and was wondering if
> anyone out there in netland knew of any.  If not, I guess I will have
> to write something myself.  I would appreciate any infomation about
> programs or algorithms that do file broadcasting.  It must use a broadcast,
> not a copy to one machine then copy to another method (i.e. UDP), and
> if a machine is up it must reliably send the file.
>
>

We have written a protocol we call "A Coherent File Transfer Protocol" 
(RFC number pending). The idea is that the server broadcasts packets
from a file, and all the clients grab them as they fly by. If they miss
any, they send block requests to the server. We are in the process
of polishing the reference port, which will be available from 
cs.columbia.edu [128.59.16.20] for anonymous ftp. 

Watch this space!

/ji

In-Real-Life: John "Heldenprogrammer" Ioannidis
E-Mail-To: ji at cs.columbia.edu
V-Mail-To: +1 212 854 8120
P-Mail-To: 450 Computer Science \n Columbia University \n New York, NY 10027