[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 65, Issue 3

[Larry Stewart]

I wasn't aware of the PILC work but just because it is interesting and mathy and fun I'll mention that network coding, I think invented after 2005, is relevant.  Matteo Frigo and I worked on this in 2014 and there's a bunch of work by others. The essential idea is a rateless error correcting code. The transmitter keeps sending packets and when the receiver gets "enough" of them it can reconstruct the entire message. 

One implementation transmits pseudorandom linear combinations of all previous packets and when you get enough of them a solution to the linear equations becomes possible. The details are how to estimate the error rate and assure incremental progress.

I think Microsoft has a paper in which they use this idea to implement commuter van wifi via a noisy cellular link.

With nearly free computation maybe it's time to take another look at forward error correction.

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>   1. Re: TCP RTT Estimator (Greg Skinner)
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> Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2025 00:11:33 -0700
> From: Greg Skinner <gregskinner0 at icloud.com>
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> Subject: Re: [ih] TCP RTT Estimator
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> For what it's worth, the PILC (Performance Implications of Link Characteristics) WG took up the issue of lossy networks around the end of last century. [1] A quick scan of their mailing list indicated some discussion of amateur (ham) and even some military packet radio networks. [2]
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> --gregbo
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> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/pilc/about/
> [2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/pilc/
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