MIT outlines the promise of network coding technology
Network coding is one of those technologies I keep thinking could really take off.
For the uninitiated, network coding enables routers not to just hand off packets but to mathematically combine them into more efficiently transferred hybrid packets.
I remember first hearing about the concept about 4 years ago at a presentation at MIT by a researcher and associate professor named Dina Katabi, who spoke about its applications in wireless networking.
A year later, I read a good article about network coding in Scientific American and urged colleague Jim Duffy, our resident routing expert, to explore the topic. He wrote a good piece that we headlined: Network coding: networking’s next revolution? and a companion piece on Microsoft’s network coding efforts.
Now about two years later I’ve just finished reading a two-part series on the latest network coding advances via MIT’s news office. Actually, it’s not clear to me just how much has changed in the last couple of years, though the IEEE has recognized a couple of papers from MIT for their worthiness. MIT also says that vendors like Intel and Cisco are either playing with network coding in their labs or keeping a close eye on it. Which means we’ll try to keep a close eye on it too, although at this point it still seems network coding is pretty much a behind-the-scenes technology.
Follow Bob Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/alphadoggs
