Rateless/fountain codes are designed so that all input symbols can be
recovered from a slightly larger number of coded symbols, with high
probability using an iterative decoder. In this paper we investigate
the number of input symbols that can be recovered by the same decoder,
but when the number of coded symbols available is {\em less than} the
total number of input symbols. Of course recovery of all inputs is not
possible, and the fraction that can be recovered will depend on the
output degree distribution of the code. 

In this paper we {\em (a)} outer bound the fraction of inputs that can
be recovered for {\em any} output degree distribution of the code, and
{\em (b)} design degree distributions which meet/perform close to this
bound. Our results are of interest for real-time systems using
rateless codes, and for Raptor-type two-stage designs.