Supporting Transitions in Peer-to-Peer Video Streaming
Key: Ric12-1
Author: Björn Richerzhagen
Date: November 2012
Kind: @mastersthesis
Abstract: Multimedia streaming applications are the single largest cause of downstream traffic in the Internet. The load on such a streaming service depends highly on the time of the day as well as on the content of the stream. Real-world events can trigger spontaneous and massive increases in the amount of users over a short period of time. Thus, a streaming service has to operate under highly dynamic conditions and has to tolerate massive arrivals and departures of participants. Providing a service at a large scale via a Content Distribution Network (CDN) or cloud-based architecture implies significant operational cost. Here, the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) paradigm is a promising alternative, as it provides scalability by utilizing the consumers’ resources. A multitude of P2P live streaming applications have been proposed in recent years. However, those systems are tailored towards specific scenarios, under which they expose their best performance. In this thesis, we present a new design paradigm for P2P streaming systems, that enables seamless transitions between different mechanisms. We propose a layered architecture, with well-defined protocols for the neighborhood discovery and the scheduling mechanisms, to support different such mechanisms in one system. Thereby, the streaming system can adapt to the current conditions by always choosing the most suitable mechanism. We evaluate our system against two mesh-based and one tree-based overlay, showing that the transition-enabled system outperforms them under all environmental conditions. Even more important, it combines their strengths to provide consistently high performance, even during flash crowds and under high churn. Our work motivates the design of transition-enabled systems and thereby utilize the strengths of a multitude of mechanisms, rather than trying to build a single, one-size-fits-all solution.
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