Patent ID: 7660245

Claim:
In a packet communications system wherein stream data is transported from at least one transmitter to at least one receiver in packets over a channel over which packet loss or corruption is possible, a method of encoding stream data with forward error correction (“FEC”) information comprising: receiving source packets at the at least one transmitter, source packets comprising source data to be transported, the source data being stream data in that a transmitter transmitting the source data does not require that all of the stream data be available prior to beginning transmission; generating FEC source packets, wherein the FEC source packets include information representing data from the source packets, formatted to allow for identification of lost or corrupted source packets at the one or more receiver; arranging source data from the source packets into a plurality of source symbols wherein a first source packet in the source packets is arranged into a first number of source symbols, wherein a second source packet in the source packets is arranged into a second number of source symbols, wherein the first number of source symbols is different than the second number of source symbols; associating a plurality of source symbols with a source block; generating a plurality of repair symbols from the source symbols of the source block according to a predetermined FEC encoding process; grouping the plurality of repair symbols into one or more FEC repair packets associated with the source block; and encoding the FEC source packets and the FEC repair packets for transmission.