Patent ID: 8542593

Claim:
A method for error tolerant delivery of transmitted data to a plurality of receiver devices, useful in association with a transmitter configured to periodically transmit data associated with the plurality of receiver devices, the method comprising: receiving a file for transmission, wherein the file includes metadata and data; grouping optional portions of the metadata into optional groups; grouping mandatory portions of the metadata into mandatory groups; parsing the file into packets; transmitting the parsed packets to a plurality of receiver devices; determining a probability of receipt of the transmitted packets per receiver device of the plurality of receiver devices; determining a multicast cost of transmission of the packets using the multicast platform; determining a unicast cost of transmitting the packets to one receiver device of the plurality of receiver devices using a unicast transmission mechanism; minimizing cost of packet delivery, wherein the minimization includes the multicast cost, the unicast cost, and the probability of receipt of the packets per receiver device, and wherein the minimizing cost of packet delivery includes determining an optimal number of multicast retransmissions, wherein minimizing cost of packet delivery includes minimizing an equation: C ( n )= M×n +(1 −P ) n ×R×U; where: M=cost of the multicast transmission; U=cost of the unicast transmission; n=number of multicast transmissions; P=the probability of receipt of the packet per receiver device for the multicast transmission; and R=total number of the plurality of receiver devices; and retransmitting the packets according to the computed optimal number of multicast retransmissions.