Patent ID: 8375087

Claim:
In a system having a source node and a plurality of consumer nodes, a bandwidth-adaptive method for synchronizing a consumer node representation of a dynamic data set and the source node representation of the dynamic data set, the method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving, at a communications service from a source node, a first metadata packet identifying a first plurality of data packets that represent a first state of at least a portion of a changing data set at a first point in time and a second metadata packet identifying a second plurality of data packets that represent a second state of at least a portion of the changing data set at a second point in time, wherein the first and second metadata packets identify at least one identical data packet that has not changed between the first and second points in time; (b) receiving, at the communication service from the source node, at least one of the identified first plurality of data packets and at least one of the identified second plurality of data packets; (c) selecting at least one of the received first plurality of data packets responsive to the received first metadata packet that has not yet been transmitted to a first consumer node and at least one of the received second plurality of data packets responsive to the received second metadata packet that has not yet been transmitted to a second consumer node; (d) transmitting, from the communications service to the first consumer node, the first metadata packet and the selected at least one of the first plurality of data packets; and (e) transmitting, from the communications service to the second consumer node, the second metadata packet and the selected at least one of the second plurality of data packets; wherein the first consumer node receives metadata packet and data packet pairs more frequently than the second consumer node.