Burn-in system for multicast data transmission

1. A system for improving a reliability of transmission of multibroadcast data, the system comprising: a plurality of customer receivers coupled to a telecommunications network and configured to receive a transmission of the multibroadcast data via the telecommunications network, at least some of the plurality of customer receivers being peers of a peer-to-peer network; a supervision server coupled to the telecommunications network and being configured to provide each customer receiver with a list of at least one other customer receiver of the plurality of customer receivers, said provided customer receiver being configured to receive missing data of said multibroadcast data from said at least one other customer receiver of the list via a reliable peer-to-peer connection on the peer-to-peer network; and a multicast source of data adapted to transmit to said plurality of customer receivers, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, said multicast source of data being adapted to transmit to the customer receivers hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data.

2. A system of providing a data multibroadcast to a plurality of customer receivers of said data via a telecommunications network, comprising: a source of data adapted to transmit to said customer receivers, before the data, the root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, said source of data being adapted to transmit to the customer receivers hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data, a customer receiver being adapted to receive missing data from another customer receiver via a reliable peer-to-peer connection.

3. A system comprising:

a multicast source configured to transmit multicast data to a plurality of customer receivers of said data via a telecommunications network, the multicast source of data being configured to transmit to said plurality of customer receivers, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, said multicast source of data being further configured to transmit to the customer receivers hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data, at least some of the plurality of customer receivers being peers of a peer-to-peer network; and

a supervision server coupled in the telecommunications network and configured to provide each customer receiver with a list of at least one other of the plurality of customer receivers, said list being configured to enable establishment of a reliable peer-to-peer connection between the customer receiver provided with the list and said other customer receiver.

4. A system for improving the reliability of transmission of multicast data comprising:

a plurality of customer receivers, which are coupled to receive multicast data via a telecommunications network;

a multicast source of data adapted to transmit to said plurality of customer receivers, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, said multicast source of data being adapted to transmit to the customer receivers hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data; and

a reference source having said multicast data previously stored and being configured to establish a reliable peer-to-peer connection with at least one customer receiver and transmit at least a portion of said multicast data to the at least one receiver via the peer-to-peer network.

5. A system for improving the reliability of transmission of multicast data, the system comprising:

a customer receiver configured to receive the multicast data from a multicast source via a telecommunications system and to receive from the multicast source, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, and to receive from the multicast source hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data, the customer receiver being further configured to receive missing data of said multicast data from another customer receiver of said multicast data via a peer-to-peer connection, the customer receiver including a verification unit configured to verify integrity of the missing data provided by said other customer receiver during the peer-to-peer connection.

6. The system according to claim 5 , wherein said verification unit includes a calculation unit configured to calculate hashes of fragments of data received from at least one other customer receiver and a comparison unit configured to compare the calculated hashes with hashes of said fragments received from said source of data.

7. The system according to claim 6 , wherein said verification unit is configured to verify the integrity of hashes provided by said other customer receiver during a peer-to-peer connection.

8. The system according to claim 7 , wherein said verification unit uses the Merkle hash tree.

9. A method comprising:

transmitting multicast data from a multicast source to a plurality of customer receivers via a telecommunications network, comprising transmitting to said plurality of customer receivers, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, and transmitting to the customer receivers hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data; and

transmitting data missing from said multicast data in a first of said customer receivers from a second of the customer receivers to said first customer receiver a reliable peer-to-peer connection.

10. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoded with computer program instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to execute steps of the method according to claim 9 .

11. A method comprising: receiving by a first customer receiver, among a plurality of customer receivers, multicast data transmitted by a multicast source via a telecommunications network, including receiving from the multicast source, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, and receiving from the multicast source hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data; and receiving by said first customer receiver data missing from said multicast data from a second of the plurality customer receivers via a reliable peer-to-peer connection.

12. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoded with computer program instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to execute steps of the method according to claim 11 .

13. A customer receiver comprising:

a non-transitory memory; and

a computer program stored in the non-transitory memory and comprising:

instructions configured to receive multicast data from multicast source via a telecommunications network, including receiving from the multicast source, before the data, a root hash of a Merkle hash tree of said data by reliable multibroadcasting via said telecommunications network, and receiving from the multicast source hashes of lower level than said root hash after said root hash and before said data; and

instructions configured to perform the following steps after the multicast data, except missing data, are received by the customer receiver:

requesting the missing data from a further customer receiver that also received the multicast data from the multicast source; and

receiving the missing data from the further customer receiver via a peer-to-peer connection.