  Short message noisy network coding (SNNC) differs from long message noisy
network coding (LNNC) in that one transmits many short messages in blocks
rather than using one long message with repetitive encoding. Several properties
of SNNC are developed. First, SNNC with backward decoding achieves the same
rates as SNNC with offset encoding and sliding window decoding for memoryless
networks where each node transmits a multicast message. The rates are the same
as LNNC with joint decoding. Second, SNNC enables early decoding if the channel
quality happens to be good. This leads to mixed strategies that unify the
advantages of decode-forward and noisy network coding. Third, the best decoders
sometimes treat other nodes' signals as noise and an iterative method is given
to find the set of nodes that a given node should treat as noise sources.
