Patent ID: 8479082

Claim:
In a packet encoding device, a method of encoding packets comprising: receiving a message packet; subdividing the received message packet into a sequence of k symbols, each of the k symbols comprising p>1 bits and each being a symbol in a symbol alphabet defined over GF(q), wherein q is a positive integer; encoding the k symbols into a computed codeword block of n symbols c i , i=[0, . . . , n−1], wherein n>k, wherein the n symbols of the computed codeword block satisfy a family of equations calculated over GF(q) and having parameters q, α and β, wherein each symbol c 1 is a symbol in the symbol alphabet defined over GF(q), and wherein α and β are both positive integers, and a specifies a number x≦α of the n symbols that are recoverable by an inverse decoding procedure applied to a modified codeword block that corresponds to the computed codeword block with x of the symbols having undetermined values; packetizing the computed codeword block of n symbols into a sequence of m>1 network packets, each network packet in the sequence including an indicator of its position in the sequence; and transmitting the sequence of network packets on a network communicatively coupled with the packet encoding device.