RE: [Etherboot-developers] Re: TCP and HTTP support

[Timothy L. <tl...@ro...>]

> I meant just steal the idea. Clients who don't have the whole file go
> asking around for someone who has some or all of the missing pieces.
It
> was the bitmap of blocks in both slam and bittorrent that triggered my
> pattern matching brain cells.

That was part of the reason I thought of tftm sending out the packets
they received.  A client that comes on line part way through the
multicast file receives the last half of the file from the server and
must wait till another client asks for the initial blocks (or it becomes
the master client).  

What if some of the clients started sending out the initial blocks?  If
sent to the same multicast address it could allow the other clients to
fill in their missing blocks without requiring the server to resend
them.  

Of course, in a setting of 10s, 100s of clients this could result in a
lot of transmits for no good reason.  I suppose tftm could be extended
to send requests to the multicast group if it is not the master client.
Other clients in the group could respond to this transmission by sending
requested blocks of the file.

Tim