Peer-to-peer media streaming based on network coding over random multicast trees

Network coding is known to provide increased throughput and reduced delay for networked communications. In this paper we propose a peer-to-peer media streaming system that exploits network coding in order to achieve low start-up delay, high streaming rate, and high resiliency to peers’ and network dynamics, such as ungraceful peer departures, and delays or packet losses. To achieve this objective, we introduce “random multicast trees” as overlay topology. This concept offers all benefits of tree-based overlays, notably a short start-up delay, but is much more efficient at distributing data and recovering from ungraceful peers departures and packet losses. We develop a push-based streaming system that leverages network coding to efficiently distribute the information in the overlay without using buffer maps, with associated membership management and packet loss recovery procedures. We report performance results of the proposed system and compare it with an optimized pull systems based on Coolstreaming, showing a significant performance improvement in terms of delay and resiliency to peers’ dynamics and packet losses.