PileCast: Multiple bit rate live video streaming over BitTorrent

In recent years, the demand for live video streaming has steadily increased. Unfortunately, current video streaming architectures embody a number of drawbacks, which impact the quality of live video streaming and place a heavy demand on the video streaming server. Client-server architectures engender issues of network congestion, server bottlenecks and load-balancing, often leading to poor quality video playback at the client and thus making them inappropriate for live video streaming. Moreover, most live video streaming systems offer only a single, fixed bit rate video stream, which is typically not appropriate for all clients. If this bit rate is too high, then some clients may not possess sufficient bandwidth to view the video stream. Conversely, if it is set too low, then all clients will receive a low quality video stream, even those whose bandwidth can support a higher standard. The aforementioned issues can be addressed using multiple bit rate video streaming, thereby allowing clients to download content at a rate appropriate for their bandwidth. This paper focuses on the utilization of a BitTorrent-based, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architecture, which mitigates the load on the video streaming server whilst supporting multiple bit rate live video streaming. Using this architecture, each client is able to share the responsibility of the streaming server by providing part of the steamed video content to other clients. Simulations conducted indicate that the proposed architecture offers better performance than both: the client-server approach and current P2P-based live video streaming systems.

[1]  Bharat K. Bhargava,et al.  CollectCast: A peer-to-peer service for media streaming , 2005, Multimedia Systems.

[2]  Gang Wu,et al.  How efficient is BitTorrent? , 2006, Electronic Imaging.

[3]  Bharat K. Bhargava,et al.  On peer-to-peer media streaming , 2002, Proceedings 22nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[4]  Ahmad Khonsari,et al.  Content-aware rate allocation for efficient video streaming via dynamic network utility maximization , 2012, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[5]  Michalis Faloutsos,et al.  BiToS: Enhancing BitTorrent for Supporting Streaming Applications , 2006, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[6]  Reza Rejaie,et al.  PRIME: Peer-to-Peer Receiver-drIven MEsh-Based Streaming , 2007, IEEE INFOCOM 2007 - 26th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[7]  Keqiu Li,et al.  Layered video multicast with a P2P cooperation approach , 2011, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[8]  Jehan-François Pâris,et al.  Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Streaming Using BitTorrent , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference.

[9]  Yunhao Liu,et al.  AnySee: Peer-to-Peer Live Streaming , 2006, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[10]  Leonard Kleinrock,et al.  Analytical Model for BitTorrent-Based Live Video Streaming , 2007, 2007 4th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference.

[11]  Arvind Krishnamurthy,et al.  LiveSwarms: Adapting BitTorrent for end host multicast , 2005 .

[12]  Bu-Sung Lee,et al.  A framework for multicast video streaming over IP networks , 2003, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[13]  Bo Li,et al.  DONet: A Data-Driven Overlay Network For Efficient Live Media Streaming , 2004, INFOCOM 2005.

[14]  Guillaume Urvoy-Keller,et al.  Rarest first and choke algorithms are enough , 2006, IMC '06.

[15]  Miguel Castro,et al.  SplitStream: high-bandwidth multicast in cooperative environments , 2003, SOSP '03.

[16]  Rauf Izmailov,et al.  Peer-to-peer streaming of stored media: the indirect approach , 2006, SIGMETRICS '06/Performance '06.

[17]  Mahesh K. Marina,et al.  Proceedings of the 28th IEEE international conference on Computer Communications Workshops , 2009 .

[18]  Philip A. Chou,et al.  Optimal control of multiple bit rates for streaming media , 2004 .

[19]  Chen-Nee Chuah,et al.  BASS: BitTorrent Assisted Streaming System for Video-on-Demand , 2005, 2005 IEEE 7th Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing.

[20]  Shipeng Li,et al.  Optimized streaming media proxy and its applications , 2007, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[21]  Qinghua Zheng,et al.  An overlay multicast protocol for live streaming and delay-guaranteed interactive media , 2012, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[22]  Venkata N. Padmanabhan,et al.  The Case for Cooperative Networking , 2002, IPTPS.

[23]  Bharat K. Bhargava,et al.  PROMISE: peer-to-peer media streaming using CollectCast , 2003, MULTIMEDIA '03.

[24]  Kien A. Hua,et al.  ZIGZAG: an efficient peer-to-peer scheme for media streaming , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).