Media companies and other organizations with large amounts of digital content require transfer of extremely large files in a short time from a single source to a collection of geographically dispersed destinations. Due to the high cost of terrestrial networks of sufficient scope and bandwidth, satellite networks are the most common means for performing such transfers. However, satellite file transfer relies on expensive error correction based on a combination of forward error correction and whole-file retransmission. This paper presents a hybrid solution that combines the advantages of satellite and terrestrial networks to provide cost-effective reliable file transfer. Specifically, we propose a new peer-to-peer (P2P) scheme that exploits fast terrestrial networks and the availability of multiple receivers to recover from high loss rates (5% or more) in near real-time (latency<400ms). This solution is efficient, robust under variable packet loss and connectivity, user tunable, scales to hundreds of nodes, and doubles bandwidth compared to existing approaches. The system has been validated via extensive simulations using a terrestrial network based on the AT&T common backbone core network.

Pre-2018 CSE ID: CS2005-0842