Peer-to-Peer Live streaming and Video on Demand is the most popular media applications over the Internet in recent years. These systems reduce the load on the server and provide a scalable content distribution. A new paradigm of P2P network collaborates to build large distributed video applications on existing networks .But, the problem of designing the system are at par with the P2P media streaming, live and Video on demand systems. Hence a comprehensive design comparison is needed to build such kind of system architecture. Therefore, in this paper we elaborately studied the traditional approaches for P2P streaming architectures, and its critical design issues, as well as practicable challenges. Thus, our studies in this paper clearly point the tangible design issues and its challenges, and other intangible issues for providing P2P VoD services.
Multiview video supports observing a scene from different viewpoints. The Joint Video Team (JVT) developed H.264/MVC to enhance the compression efficiency for multiview video, however, MVC encoded multiview video (MVC video) still requires high bitrates for transmission. This paper investigates live MVC video streaming over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The goal is to minimize the server bandwidth costs whist ensuring high streaming quality to peers. MVC employs intra-view and inter-view prediction structures, which leads to a complicated layer dependency relationship. As the peers' outbound ba…
We are motivated by the problem of designing a simple distributed algorithm for Peer-to-Peer streaming applications that can achieve high throughput and low delay, while allowing the neighbor set maintained by each peer to be small. While previous works have mostly used tree structures, our algorithm constructs multiple random directed Hamiltonian cycles and disseminates content over the superposed graph of the cycles. We show that it is possible to achieve the maximum streaming capacity even when each peer only transmits to and receives from Theta(1) neighbors. Further, we show that the propo…
Network coding based peer-to-peer streaming represents an effective solution to aggregate user capacities and to increase system throughput in live multimedia streaming. Nonetheless, such systems are vulnerable to pollution attacks where a handful of malicious peers can disrupt the communication by transmitting just a few bogus packets which are then recombined and relayed by unaware honest nodes, further spreading the pollution over the network. Whereas previous research focused on malicious nodes identification schemes and pollution-resilient coding, in this paper we show pollution counterme…
In recent years, research efforts tried to exploit peer-to-peer (P2P) systems in order to provide Live Streaming (LS) and Video-on-Demand (VoD) services. Most of these research efforts focus on the development of distributed P2P block schedulers for content exchange among the participating peers and on the characteristics of the overlay graph (P2P overlay) that interconnects the set of these peers. Currently, researchers try to combine peer-to-peer systems with cloud infrastructures. They developed monitoring and control architectures that use resources from the cloud in order to enhance QoS a…
The growth of the Internet technology enables us to use network applications for streaming audio and video. Especially, real-time streaming services using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology are currently emerging. An important issue on P2P streaming is how to construct a logical network (overlay network) on a physical network (IP network). In this paper, we propose an initial peer configuration algorithm for a multi-streaming peer-to-peer network. The proposed algorithm is based on a mesh-pull approach where any node has multiple parent and child nodes as neighboring nodes, and content transmitted …
We consider multi-resolution streaming in fully-connected peer-to-peer networks, where transmission rates are constrained by arbitrarily specified upload capacities of the source and peers. We fully characterize the capacity region of rate vectors achievable with arbitrary coding, where an achievable rate vector describes a vector of throughputs of the different resolutions that can be supported by the network. We then prove that all rate vectors in the capacity region can be achieved using pure routing strategies. This shows that coding has no capacity advantage over routing in this scenario.
Given the respective advantages of the two complimentary techniques for peer-to-peer media streaming (namely tree-based push and mesh-based pull), there is a strong trend of combining them into a hybrid streaming system. Backed by recently proposed mechanisms to identify stable peers, such a hybrid system usually consists of backbone trees formed by the stable peers and other overlay structures in the second tier to accommodate the remaining peers. In this paper, we embrace the hybrid push-pull structure for peer-to-peer media streaming. Our protocol is dominated by a multi-tree push mechanism…
Recent years have witnessed a new video delivery paradigm: smartrouter-based video delivery network, which is enabled by smartrouters deployed at users' homes, together with the conventional video servers deployed in the datacenters. Recently, ChinaCache, a large content delivery network (CDN) provider, and Youku, a video service provider using smartrouters to assist video delivery, announced their cooperation to create a new paradigm of content delivery based on householders' network resources. This new paradigm is different from the conventional peer-to-peer (P2P) approach, because such dedi…
There is an increasing demand for P2P streaming in particular for layered video. In this category of applications, the stream is composed of hierarchically encoded sub-streams layers namely the base layer and enhancements layers. We consider a scenario where the receiver peer uses the pull-based approach to adjust the video quality level to their capability by subscribing to different number of layers. We note that higher layers received without their corresponding lower layers are considered as useless and cannot be played, consequently the throughput of the system will drastically degrade. T…
Minimum Physical Hop (MPH) has been proposed as a peer selection algorithm for decreasing inter-AS (Autonomous System) traffic volume in P2P live streaming. In MPH, a newly joining peer selects a peer whose physical hop count (i.e., the number of ASes traversed on the content delivery path) from it is the minimum as its providing peer. However, MPH shows high inter-AS traffic volume when the number of joining peers is large. In this paper, we propose IMPH that tries to further decrease the inter-AS traffic volume by distributing peers with one logical hop count (i.e., the number of peers or or…
Recent years mesh-based Peer-to-Peer live streaming has become a promising way for service providers to offer high-quality live video streaming service to Internet users. In this paper, we make a detailed study on modeling and performance analysis of the pull-based P2P streaming systems. We establish the analytical framework for the pull-based streaming schemes in P2P network, give accurate models of the chunk selection and peer selection strategies, and organize them into three categories, i.e., the chunk first scheme, the peer first scheme and the epidemic scheme. Through numerical performan…
The adaptation of the BitTorrent protocol to multimedia on-demand streaming systems essentially lies on the modification of its two core algorithms, namely the piece and the peer selection policies, respectively. Much more attention has though been given to the piece selection policy. Within this context, this article proposes three novel peer selection policies for the design of BitTorrent-like protocols targeted at that type of systems: Select Balanced Neighbour Policy (SBNP), Select Regular Neighbour Policy (SRNP), and Select Optimistic Neighbour Policy (SONP). These proposals are validated…
This paper is concerned with the effect of overlay network topology on the performance of live streaming peer-to-peer systems. The paper focuses on the evaluation of topologies which are aware of the delays experienced between different peers on the network. Metrics are defined which assess the topologies in terms of delay, bandwidth usage and resilience to peer drop-out. Several topology creation algorithms are tested and the metrics are measured in a simple simulation testbed. This gives an assessment of the type of gains which might be expected from locality awareness in peer-to-peer networ…
Several overlay-based live multimedia streaming platforms have been proposed in the recent peer-to-peer streaming literature. In most of the cases, the overlay neighbors are chosen randomly for robustness of the overlay. However, this causes nodes that are distant in terms of proximity in the underlying physical network to become neighbors, and thus data travels unnecessary distances before reaching the destination. For efficiency of bulk data transmission like multimedia streaming, the overlay neighborhood should resemble the proximity in the underlying network. In this paper, we exploit the …
We present a system for streaming live entertainment content over the Internet originating from a single source to a scalable number of consumers without resorting to centralised or provider- provisioned resources. The system creates a peer-to-peer overlay network, which attempts to optimise use of existing capacity to ensure quality of service, delivering low start-up delay and lag in playout of the live content. There are three main aspects of our solution. Firstly, a swarming mechanism that constructs an overlay topology for minimising propagation delays from the source to end consumers. Se…
Recent years have witnessed a new video delivery paradigm: smartrouter-based peer video content delivery network, which is enabled by smartrouters deployed at users' homes. ChinaCache (one of the largest CDN providers in China) and Youku (a video provider using smartrouters to assist video delivery) announced their cooperation in 2015, to create a new paradigm of content delivery based on householders' network resources. This new paradigm is different from the conventional peer-to-peer (P2P) approach, because millions of dedicated smartrouters are operated by the centralized video service prov…
Peer-to-Peer streaming technology has become one of the major Internet applications as it offers the opportunity of broadcasting high quality video content to a large number of peers with low costs. It is widely accepted that with the efficient utilization of peers and server's upload capacities, peers can enjoy watching a high bit rate video with minimal end-to-end delay. In this paper, we present a practical scheduling algorithm that works in the challenging condition where no spare capacity is available, i.e., it maximally utilizes the resources and broadcasts the maximum streaming rate. Ea…
Nowadays, peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming systems have become a popular way to deliver multimedia content over the internet due to their low bandwidth requirement, high video streaming quality, and flexibility. However, P2P streaming systems are vulnerable to various attacks, especially pollution attacks, due to their distributed and dynamically changing infrastructure. In this paper, by exploring the features of various pollution attacks, we propose a trust management system tailored for P2P streaming systems. Both direct trust and indirect trust are taken into consideration when designing the t…
In earlier work, we showed that it is possible to achieve $O(\log N)$ streaming delay with high probability in a peer-to-peer network, where each peer has as little as four neighbors, while achieving any arbitrary fraction of the maximum possible streaming rate. However, the constant in the $O(log N)$ delay term becomes rather large as we get closer to the maximum streaming rate. In this paper, we design an alternative pairing and chunk dissemination algorithm that allows us to transmit at the maximum streaming rate while ensuring that all, but a negligible fraction of the peers, receive the d…
In Peer-to-Peer (P2P) multichannel live streaming, helper peers with surplus bandwidth resources act as micro-servers to compensate the server deficiencies in balancing the resources between different channel overlays. With deployment of helper level between server and peers, optimizing the user/helper topology becomes a challenging task since applying well-known reciprocity-based choking algorithms is impossible due to the one-directional nature of video streaming from helpers to users. Because of selfish behavior of peers and lack of central authority among them, selection of helpers require…
The growth of real-time content streaming over the Internet has resulted in the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) approaches for scalable content delivery. In such P2P streaming systems, each peer maintains a playout buffer of content chunks which it attempts to fill by contacting other peers in the network. The objective is to ensure that the chunk to be played out is available with high probability while keeping the buffer size small. Given that a particular peer has been selected, a \emph{policy} is a rule that suggests which chunks should be requested by the peer from other peers.. We consider con…
Epidemic-style diffusion schemes have been previously proposed for achieving peer-to-peer live streaming. Their performance trade-offs have been deeply analyzed for homogeneous systems, where all peers have the same upload capacity. However, epidemic schemes designed for heterogeneous systems have not been completely understood yet. In this report we focus on the peer selection process and propose a generic model that encompasses a large class of algorithms. The process is modeled as a combination of two functions, an aware one and an agnostic one. By means of simulations, we analyze the aware…
Optimal dissemination schemes have previously been studied for peer-to-peer live streaming applications. Live streaming being a delay-sensitive application, fine tuning of dissemination parameters is crucial. In this report, we investigate optimal sizing of chunks, the units of data exchange, and probe sets, the number peers a given node probes before transmitting chunks. Chunk size can have significant impact on diffusion rate (chunk miss ratio), diffusion delay, and overhead. The size of the probe set can also affect these metrics, primarily through the choices available for chunk disseminat…
The demand for streaming media and live video conferencing is at peak and expected to grow further, thereby the need for low-cost streaming services with better quality and lower latency is essential. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel peer-to-peer (P2P) live streaming platform, called fybrrStream, where a logical mesh and physical tree i.e., hybrid topology-based approach is leveraged for low latency streaming. fybrrStream distributes the load on participating peers in a hierarchical manner by considering their network bandwidth, network latency, and node stability. fybrrStream cost…
Live multimedia streaming from mobile devices is rapidly gaining popularity but little is known about the QoE they provide. In this paper, we examine the Periscope service. We first crawl the service in order to understand its usage patterns. Then, we study the protocols used, the typical quality of experience indicators, such as playback smoothness and latency, video quality, and the energy consumption of the Android application.
We consider streaming over a peer-to-peer network with homogeneous nodes in which a single source broadcasts a data stream to all the users in the system. Peers are allowed to enter or leave the system (adversarially) arbitrarily. Previous approaches for streaming in this setting have either used randomized distribution graphs or structured trees with randomized maintenance algorithms. Randomized graphs handle peer churn well but have poor connectivity guarantees, while structured trees have good connectivity but have proven hard to maintain under peer churn. We improve upon both approaches by…
This paper presents an asynchronous distributed algorithm to manage multiple trees for peer-to-peer streaming in a flow level model. It is assumed that videos are cut into substreams, with or without source coding, to be distributed to all nodes. The algorithm guarantees that each node receives sufficiently many substreams within delay logarithmic in the number of peers. The algorithm works by constantly updating the topology so that each substream is distributed through trees to as many nodes as possible without interference. Competition among trees for limited upload capacity is managed so t…
Empowered by today's rich tools for media generation and distribution, and the convenient Internet access, crowdsourced streaming generalizes the single-source streaming paradigm by including massive contributors for a video channel. It calls a joint optimization along the path from crowdsourcers, through streaming servers, to the end-users to minimize the overall latency. The dynamics of the video sources, together with the globalized request demands and the high computation demand from each sourcer, make crowdsourced live streaming challenging even with powerful support from modern cloud com…
Layered video streaming in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has drawn great interest, since it can not only accommodate large numbers of users, but also handle peer heterogeneity. However, there's still a lack of comprehensive studies on chunk scheduling for the smooth playout of layered streams in P2P networks. In these situations, a playout smoothing mechanism can be used to ensure the uniform delivery of the layered stream. This can be achieved by reducing the quality changes that the stream undergoes when adapting to changing network conditions. This paper complements previous efforts in throug…
In search of scalable solutions, CDNs are exploring P2P support. However, the benefits of peer assistance can be limited by various obstacle factors such as ISP friendliness - requiring peers to be within the same ISP, bitrate stratification - the need to match peers with others needing similar bitrate, and partial participation - some peers choosing not to redistribute content. This work relates potential gains from peer assistance to the average number of users in a swarm, its capacity, and empirically studies the effects of these obstacle factors at scale, using a month-long trace of over 2…
Seeders (peers that do not request anything but contribute to the system) are a powerful concept in peer-to-peer (P2P). They allow to leverage the capacities of a P2P system. While seeding is a natural idea for filesharing or video-on-demand applications, it seems somehow counter-intuitive in the context of live streaming. This paper aims at describing the feasibility and performance of P2P live seeding. After a formal definition of "live seeding" and efficiency, we consider the theoretical performance of systems where the overhead is neglected. We then propose a linear overhead model and exte…
Renmin University of China（中国人民大学）；State Key Laboratory of Internet Architecture, Tsinghua University（清华大学网络与交换技术全国重点实验室）；Tencent Technologies（腾讯科技）；Shenzhen University（深圳大学）
Recently, HTTP-based adaptive streaming has become the de facto standard for video streaming over the Internet. It allows clients to dynamically adapt media characteristics to network conditions in order to ensure a high quality of experience, that is, minimize playback interruptions, while maximizing video quality at a reasonable level of quality changes. In the case of live streaming, this task becomes particularly challenging due to the latency constraints. The challenge further increases if a client uses a wireless network, where the throughput is subject to considerable fluctuations. Cons…
Streaming high quality videos consumes significantly large amount of network resources. In this context request to service delay, network traffic, congestion and server overloading are the main parameters to be considered in video streaming over the internet that effect the quality of service (QoS). In this paper, we propose an efficient architecture as a cluster of proxy servers and clients that uses a peer to peer (P2P) approach to cooperatively stream the video using chaining technique. We consider the following two key issues in the proposed architecture (1) Prefix caching technique to acc…
With high scalability, high video streaming quality, and low bandwidth requirement, peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have become a popular way to exchange files and deliver multimedia content over the internet. However, current P2P systems are suffering from "free-riding" due to the peers' selfish nature. In this paper, we propose a credit-based incentive mechanism to encourage peers to cooperate with each other in a heterogeneous network consisting of wired and wireless peers. The proposed mechanism can provide differentiated service to peers with different credits through biased resource allocatio…
A key problem in random network coding (NC) lies in the complexity and energy consumption associated with the packet decoding processes, which hinder its application in mobile environments. Controlling and hence limiting such factors has always been an important but elusive research goal, since the packet degree distribution, which is the main factor driving the complexity, is altered in a non-deterministic way by the random recombinations at the network nodes. In this paper we tackle this problem proposing Band Codes (BC), a novel class of network codes specifically designed to preserve the p…
Distributed live streaming has brought a lot of interest in the past few years. In the homogeneous case (all nodes having the same capacity), many algorithms have been proposed, which have been proven almost optimal or optimal. On the other hand, the performance of heterogeneous systems is not completely understood yet. In this paper, we investigate the impact of heterogeneity on the achievable delay of chunk-based live streaming systems. We propose several models for taking the atomicity of a chunk into account. For all these models, when considering the transmission of a single chunk, hetero…
Due to missing IP multicast support on an Internet scale, over-the-top media streams are delivered with the help of overlays as used by content delivery networks and their peer-to-peer (P2P) extensions. In this context, mesh/pull-based swarming plays an important role either as pure streaming approach or in combination with tree/push mechanisms. However, the impact of realistic client populations with heterogeneous resources is not yet fully understood. In this technical report, we contribute to closing this gap by mathematically analysing the most basic scheduling mechanisms latest deadline f…
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is a recently proposed standard that offers different versions of the same media content to adapt the delivery process over the Internet to dynamic bandwidth fluctuations and different user device capabilities. The peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm for video streaming allows to leverage the cooperation among peers, guaranteeing to serve every video request with increased scalability and reduced cost. We propose to combine these two approaches in a P2P-DASH architecture, exploiting the potentiality of both. The new platform is made of several swarms, and a …
University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学）；BITS Pilani（皮拉尼比尔拉理工学院）
Social media, professional sports, and video games are driving rapid growth in live video streaming, on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Live. Live streaming experience is very susceptible to short-time-scale network congestion since client playback buffers are often no more than a few seconds. Unfortunately, identifying such streams and measuring their QoE for network management is challenging, since content providers largely use the same delivery infrastructure for live and video-on-demand (VoD) streaming, and packet inspection techniques (including SNI/DNS query monitoring) cannot alway…
We study the problem of maximizing the broadcast rate in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems under \emph{node degree bounds}, i.e., the number of neighbors a node can simultaneously connect to is upper-bounded. The problem is critical for supporting high-quality video streaming in P2P systems, and is challenging due to its combinatorial nature. In this paper, we address this problem by providing the first distributed solution that achieves near-optimal broadcast rate under arbitrary node degree bounds, and over arbitrary overlay graph. It runs on individual nodes and utilizes only the measurement from …
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks underlie a variety of decentralized paradigms including blockchains, distributed file storage and decentralized domain name systems. A central primitive in P2P networks is the peer selection algorithm, which decides how a node should select a fixed number of neighbors to connect with. In this paper, we consider the design of a peer-selection algorithm for unstructured P2P networks with the goal of minimizing the broadcast latency. We propose Goldfish, a novel solution that dynamically decides the neighbor set by exploiting the past experiences as well as exploring n…
Over the last decade, internet has seen an exponential increase in its growth.With more and more people using it, efficient data delivery over the internet has become a key issue. Peer-to-peer (P2P)/seed sharing based networks have several desirable features for content distribution, such as low costs, scalability, and fault tolerance. While the invention of each of such specialized systems has improved the user experience, some fundamental shortcomings of these systems have often been neglected. These shortcomings of content distribution systems have become severe bottlenecks in scalability o…
Hamad Bin Khalifa University（哈马德·本·哈利法大学）；Qatar University（卡塔尔大学）；Comsats Institute of Information Technology（COMSATS信息技术学院）
Crowdsourced live video streaming (livecast) services such as Facebook Live, YouNow, Douyu and Twitch are gaining more momentum recently. Allocating the limited resources in a cost-effective manner while maximizing the Quality of Service (QoS) through real-time delivery and the provision of the appropriate representations for all viewers is a challenging problem. In our paper, we introduce a machine-learning based predictive resource allocation framework for geo-distributed cloud sites, considering the delay and quality constraints to guarantee the maximum QoS for viewers and the minimum cost …
A protocol named Threshold Bipolar (TB) is proposed as a fetching strategy at the startup stage of p2p live streaming systems. In this protocol, chunks are fetched consecutively from buffer head at the beginning. After the buffer is filled into a threshold, chunks at the buffer tail will be fetched first while keeping the contiguously filled part in the buffer above the threshold even when the buffer is drained at a playback rate. High download rate, small startup latency and natural strategy handover can be reached at the same time by this protocol. Important parameters in this protocol are i…
This paper studies the statistical nature of TV channels streaming variable bit rate distribution and allocation. The goal of the paper is to derive the best-fit rate distribution to describe TV streaming bandwidth allocation, which can reveal traffic demands of users. Our analysis uses multiplexers channel bandwidth allocation (PID) data of 13 TV live channels. We apply 17 continuous and 3 discrete distributions to determine the best-fit distribution function for each individual channel and for the whole set of channels. We found that the generalized extreme distribution fitting most of our c…
Over the past decade, the Cyberspace has seen an increasing number of attacks coming from botnets using the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture. Peer-to-Peer botnets use a decentralized Command & Control architecture. Moreover, a large number of such botnets already exist, and newer versions- which significantly differ from their parent bot- are also discovered practically every year. In this work, the authors propose and implement a novel hybrid framework for detecting P2P botnets in live network traffic by integrating Neural Networks with Bayesian Regularization. Bayesian Regularization helps in…
Providing a high-quality real-time video streaming experience to mobile users is one of the biggest challenges in cellular networks. This is due to the need of these services for high rates with low variability, which is not easy to accomplish given the competition among (usually a high number of) users for constrained network resources and the high variability of their channel characteristics. A way of improving the user experience is by exploiting their buffers and the ability to provide a constant data rate to everyone, as one of the features of 5G networks. However, the latter is not very …
KTH Royal Institute of Technology（瑞典皇家理工学院）；Hive Streaming AB（Hive Streaming公司）；University of Thessaly（色萨利大学）
In this study, we present a meta-learning model to adapt the predictions of the network's capacity between viewers who participate in a live video streaming event. We propose the MELANIE model, where an event is formulated as a Markov Decision Process, performing meta-learning on reinforcement learning tasks. By considering a new event as a task, we design an actor-critic learning scheme to compute the optimal policy on estimating the viewers' high-bandwidth connections. To ensure fast adaptation to new connections or changes among viewers during an event, we implement a prioritized replay mem…
