Gartner Glossary

Information Dispersal Algorithms

Information dispersal algorithms provide a methodology for storing information in pieces (dispersed) across multiple locations, so that redundancy protects the information in the event of a location outage, but unauthorized access at any single location does not provide usable information. Only the originator or a user with a list of the latest pointers with the original dispersal algorithm can properly assemble the complete information. This has been expanded to include peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technologies and protocols, such as those based on the BitTorrent Protocol, which has proved to be robust on the Internet.