[Q] multicasting product ?

[HP Wei]

>> But, as this send whole files, I'm a little bit irritated about the name
>> "mrsync" - wouldn't mrcp or mtftp be better?
>Or "mrdist".  
   
    I agree that mrcp (or mrdist)
    is perhaps a name that more adequately
    captures the functionality of this code at this moment.
    
    If this code is really useful in general, 
    and it depends on where the code might be going,
    I will wait for the next
    major revision to use a more appropriate name.
    
>Maybe they hoped to put in the rsync algorithm into
>eventually, but it seems to me that it would be very difficult to robustly
>implement the rsync algorithm over multicast, because each receiver could
>conceivably require different blocks to be sent. 

  Yes, this is indeed not easy.

> In practice, however,
>this will be mostly be used for mirroring so all the receivers should
>normally have the same files to begin with, and maybe they could optimize
>it for that case and just have reduced performance for the unusual case.

  This is one direction this code can be going, at least at our site.
  (Our machines, except the master machine,
   are supposed to be in the same state all the time!)
   
  So, incorporating the rsync algorithm will improve the performance.

> but I think there'd need to be some way of detecting and
>supporting the receivers that aren't identical.
 
   This will be a good problem to think about! 

>> But otherwise this could be exactly what I need.
>> Please let me know as soon as this is available somewhere as GPL or BSD or
>> similar license!

   As soon as our manager clarifies certain copyright issues, 
   I can put the codes somewhere.
   He just informed me that
   we are looking at around next week or Jan 1.
  
Happy holidays,
HP