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.

The new version adds important and missing references. The paper was shortened to better emphasize the new insights, especially that short messages enable decode-forward