The Challenge of Large File Checksums
6 days ago
- #Merkle Tree
- #Golang
- #checksum
- The article discusses the importance of checksums for verifying file integrity, especially against corruption or tampering.
- Modern internet users often overlook checksums, relying on data transfer protocols for error-free downloads.
- The author prefers using checksums for large files, despite the slight delay it introduces.
- Introduces Merkle Trees as a solution for efficiently computing checksums for large files by breaking them into chunks.
- Merkle Trees work by hashing file chunks (leaf nodes) and then recursively hashing neighboring chunks until a single root hash is obtained.
- The author shares a concurrent Merkle Tree program written in Golang, opting for a pipeline method over fork-join for its straightforward implementation.