For applications with high load and low delay requirements the Fountain codes, a set of rate-less codes, particularly suited. Fountain codes are still end-to-end: packets are encoded at the source and decoded at the receiver.  If I'm not mistaken, random linear network coding has higher robustness and adaptability in non-mesh networks over fountain codes. 

Fountain Codes can be used for error correction (Forward Error Correction). This can improve the reliability of the network.