Reliable broadcast protocol structure for electronic software distribution

摘要

According to this invention, the system prepares user data into blocks of manageable size prior to software distribution. A block is similar in principle to memory pages in a file management system and has a predefined size, sequential ordering, and layout from which the original information can be reconstructed. The broadcast protocol is enhanced to include a block identifier to identify where the receiver performs error detection and error correction on each block. Station receiving the data maintains a list of the identity of those blocks of data that it believes have not been received properly. With each retransmission, each work station attempts to receive and recover those blocks marked on its list. Advantageously, each transmitted block is encoded using forward error correction in order to further enhance the probability of proper reception of the data. Thus, a very high-speed broadcast system of data/software updates can be sent to many switching offices simultaneously with a guarantee of high accuracy of reception.