[Beowulf] copying big files (Henning Fehrmann)

[Perry E. Metzger]

"David Mathog" <mathog at caltech.edu> writes:
> Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>> Is there a reason bittorrent isn't suited to this application?
>
> That would probably work too.  
>
> I also recall reading about "broadcast" methods for doing this sort
> of distribution.

John Ioannidis designed a protocol for this years ago called the
Coherent File Distribution Protocol, CFDP.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1235

It can be used for things like mass loading hundreds of machines with
a single file on a broadcast fabric. It was originally intended for
loading huge numbers of clients over a wireless broadcast network, for
which it worked quite well.

There hasn't been much interest in it over time, perhaps because the
sorts of problems it was intended for are rare enough that people just
use ad hoc methods.

I think JI's original implementation is open source, though it is
quite creaky at this point. If there is interest, I can ask him to put
it up on the web somewhere.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com