The decoding amounts to solving a system of linear equation where each equation corresponds to one received packet. Assuming the file to be sent was broken into

The decoding amounts to solving a system of linear equation where each equation corresponds to one received packet. Assuming the file to be sent was broken into n parts, minimum n independent equations are required for reconstruction. To do that optimally, receiver needs to keep trying to solve the linear equation system once it has received at least n packets. This means O(n^3) in general case for each received packet. If the equations are generated randomly, the expected overhead seems to be a mere 1.61 extra packets! http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/abi/abi-seminar07/abiseminar07-tuomas.pdf http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/abi/abi-seminar07/abiseminar07... In practice however, depending on the receiver, you may not want it to solve a general system of linear equations for every packet it receives when n is big. It might be better to stick to a simple algorithm (which has a better time complexity if certain conditions are satisfied by the linear system) and just wait to accumulate enough equations for it to become applicable.