Reliable message delivery via unreliable networks

Modern networks are highly connected with different network types such as fiber, wireless and satcom as well as having global extent and ubiquitous access. Vulnerabilities at a portion of the network can spread to other parts of the network. Thus, each node or link of the network should be viewed as inherently unreliable. This paper examines the problem of transmission of critical messages over a network via the use of path diversity and forward error-correcting codes and suggests strategies for performance-cost trade-offs.