Efficiency of rateless secure network coding

Network coding allows to increase the throughput as well as the robustness of data transmissions. Regarding robustness, especially rateless network coding was shown to be beneficial. However, the vulnerability of mere network coding against attacks requires introducing security mechanisms, and as known, security implies costs. Within this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of secure network coding schemes applied in a rateless manner. Our results show that secure rateless network coding schemes can still outperform routing. The actual efficiency depends on parameters like generation size, packet size, or network topology. Since conflicting efficiency parameters cannot be fulfilled in equal measure, selection of a secure network coding scheme and its parameters should be done adapted to the actual communication requirements. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).