A system and method relating to techniques to efficiently update data transmissions,
and more particularly to a system and method for using patch enabling Web traffic
or Web Internet transmissions, using existing infrastructure so that "difference"
information can be sent to an application rather than a complete updated data set,
therefore increasing the effective bandwidth along the transmission medium/channel.
A proxy server tracks previous versions of content being sent to various clients.
In the case where this is new data to the requesting client, then the proxy server
sends back the most recent version of this data to the client. If the requested
data is an updated version of something already stored in cache on the client side
(i.e., data already known to be sent to the client), then the proxy server runs
a differencing algorithm and generates a binary patch file identifying steps to
perform to update the information. If there is no version of the requested information
already on server side and client side, then the entire information packet is sent
to the client. Both the server and client must be "patch-enabled".
