Patent ID: 8135863

Claim:
A method of transmitting data over a decentralised network, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of data files at a relay device, each of the data files having a respective predetermined expiry time, and at least one of the data files being a compressed data file, processing the data in the received plurality of data files by aggregating those of the received data files having a common predetermined expiry time to create a plurality of aggregated compressed data files, and broadcasting each aggregated compressed data file to a plurality of similar relay devices over the decentralised network, wherein the compression and aggregation technique applied to the data is a Bloom filter process, and wherein each individual aggregated compressed data file has a predetermined expiry time which is equal to the common predetermined expiry time of the received data files included in that individual aggregated compressed data file, and wherein are forwarded only those aggregated compressed data files for which the respective predetermined expiry times have not been exceeded, and wherein the aggregated compressed data files are broadcasted using an epidemic dissemination process.