rStream: Resilient and Optimal Peer-to-Peer Streaming with Rateless Codes

Due to the lack of stability and reliability in peer-to-peer networks, multimedia streaming over peer-to-peer networks represents several fundamental engineering challenges. First, multimedia streaming sessions need to be resilient to volatile network dynamics and node departures that are characteristic in peer-to-peer networks. Second, they need to take full advantage of the existing bandwidth capacities, by minimizing the delivery of redundant content and the need for content reconciliation among peers during streaming. Finally, streaming peers need to be optimally selected to construct high-quality streaming topologies, so that end-to-end latencies are taken into consideration. The original contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, we propose to use a recent coding technique, referred to as rateless codes, to code the multimedia bitstreams before they are transmitted over peerto-peer links. The use of rateless codes eliminates the requirements of content reconciliation, as w...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TPDS
• Authors: Chuan Wu, Baochun Li
• Keywords: Peer-to-peer Networks, Redundant Content, TPDS 2008, Volatile Network Dynamics