https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_code https://x.com/doodlestein/status/2075711880426062074 https://jeffreyemanuel.com/writing/raptorq "Raptor codes are the first known class of fountain codes with linear time encoding and decoding" "In RaptorQ, every file turns into a stream of symbols where any K (plus a small epsilon) of them reconstruct the original. You can think of these as fungible water droplets from a fountain (hence the name fountain code), any one of which can help you fill your glass (reconstruct your file); there's no "rarest" hard-to-find chunk to cause you to get stuck at 99% completion, like with BitTorrent, which has disjoint, non-fungible chunks. So the question "which packets got lost?" stops mattering, only the NUMBER of distinct packets sent matters. That one property nullifies the entire retransmission conversation since you no longer have per-loss round trips, head-of-line blocking, or window collapse. A 10% loss rate costs roughly 10% extra bandwidth instead of stalling everything." "Turn any file into an infinite stream of interchangeable packets. Collect any K of them, in any order, and recover the original. The total overhead: under 5%." TIL about fountain codes and RaptorQ, it's really incredible