Patent ID: 7801069

Claim:
A method of distributing packets from a multimedia source to a plurality of nodes, said method comprising: (a) in at least one of the plurality of nodes, (i) receiving a packet stream containing one or more packets from the multimedia source; (ii) outputting a received packet; (iii) formulating a first linear combination of the one or more packets received in the packet stream; (iv) outputting the formulated first linear combination; (b) in at least another one of the plurality of nodes, (i) receiving the packet stream from the multimedia source; (ii) receiving the packet and the first linear combination outputted by the at least one of the plurality of nodes; (iii) formulating another linear combination of the one or more packets received from the packet stream; (iv) solving N linear equations for M missing packets, wherein the linear equations are comprised of M linear combinations received from other nodes and (N-M) original packets received from the multimedia source, where N and M are positive integers; (v) determining whether the packet outputted by the at least one other node comprises a missing packet of the M missing packets; and (vi) storing the packet outputted by the at least one other node in response to the outputted packet comprising the missing packet.