- From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 13:09:42 MDT
- To: "Mordechai T. Abzug" <mabzug1@gl.umbc.edu>
- Cc: HTTP Working Group <http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Simple file length may not suffice, so it would be better to determine
the checksum. Although the client could calculate this, it makes more
sense to do so on the server side, to preserve bandwidth.
The use of a simple checksum might be too prone to false positives.
I'm not an expert on the topic, but apparently people have developed
"fingerprinting" algorithms that have very low probabilities of
mapping two texts to the same value.
I found one citation on the topic:
Rabin, M. O.
"Fingerprinting by Random Polynomials"
Center for Research in Computing Technology
Harvard University
Report TR-15-81, 1981
but I suspect there are others.
-Jeff
Received on Tuesday, 25 July 1995 13:14:18 UTC