1. A method for transferring data from a host computer to at least one subscriber computer, the data comprising a plurality of k original packets, where k is a positive integer, said method comprising the steps of: encoding the k original packets to form a plurality of n encoded packets, where n&gt;k; transmitting the encoded packets from the host computer to the at least one subscriber computer; and decoding any combination of k correctly-received encoded packets to reconstruct the k original packets, wherein the original packets are encoded with a k.times.n code generator matrix and the left k.times.k submatrix of the k.times.n code generator matrix is the identity matrix, so that the first k encoded packets are the original k packets, and thus if the first k encoded packets are received correctly, the decoding step is not performed, and wherein n is recomputed for each transmission based on an estimate of the percentage of packets expected to be lost during that transmission.