This paper presents gradienTv, a distributed, market-based approach to live streaming. In gradienTv, multiple streaming trees are constructed using a market-based approach, such that nodes with increasing upload bandwidth are located closer to the media source at the roots of the trees. Market-based approaches, however, exhibit slow convergence properties on random overlay networks, so to facilitate the timely discovery of neighbours with similar upload bandwidth capacities (thus, enabling faster convergence of streaming trees), we use the gossip-generated Gradient overlay network. In the Gradient overlay, nodes are ordered by a gradient of node upload capacities and the media source is the highest point in the gradient. We compare gradienTv with state-of-the-art NewCoolstreaming in simulation, and the results show significantly improved bandwidth utilization, playback latency, playback continuity, and reduction in the average number of hops from the media source to nodes.
Amir H. Payberah, Jim Dowling, Fatemeh Rahimian, S