System for protecting the transmission of live data streams, and upon reception, for reconstructing the live data streams and recording them into files

1. A system comprising a client computer and a host computer, said client computer comprising:

means for receiving a packet stream transmitted by said host computer over a first communication channel;

means for digitally recording the received packet stream to a file; and

means for reconstructing the digitally-recorded file by retrieving one or more packets lost during transmission from said host computer, said reconstruction means using a second communication channel different from the first communication channel;

and said host computer comprising means for storing the transmitted packet stream into a file, from which file said reconstructing means of said client computer retrieves the one or more lost packets.

2. A system comprising a client computer and a host computer, said client computer comprising:

means for receiving a packet stream transmitted over a one-way communication channel by said host computer, the transmitted packet stream generated by said host computer by on-the-fly packet-level FEC encoding a plurality of original packets;

means for on-the-fly packet-level FEC decoding the received packet stream to obtain the plurality of original packets;

means for digitally recording the plurality of original packets to a file; and

means, communicatively connected to said host computer, for reconstructing the plurality of original packets by retrieving one or more packets lost during transmission over the one-way communication channel, in the event the original packets cannot be obtained by said on-the-fly packet-level FEC decoding means; and

said host computer comprising means for storing the transmitted packet stream into a file, from which file said reconstructing means of said client computer retrieves the one or more lost packets.

3. A method for iteratively generating a plurality of file indices as a packet stream is digitally recorded into a file, said method comprising the steps of:

at start of recording, selecting an upper bound for the total number of indices, and a gap between consecutive indices; and

for each iteration, generating one of the file indices, wherein the total number of indices remains between half of the selected upper bound and the selected upper bound, and the gap between consecutive indices increases.

4. A method for generating an index table containing a plurality of file indices as a packet stream is digitally recorded into a file, said method comprising the steps of:

for each packet of the packet stream, determining whether a position value is greater than or equal to a target value;

if not, increasing the position value by the length of the packet, and if so, storing the position value in the index table;

determining whether the target value is a maximal target value for a current gap value, and if so, doubling the current gap value; and

increasing the target value by the current gap value.