Abstract— High-throughput P2P streaming relies on peer selection, the strategy a peer uses to select other peer(s) as its parent(s) of streaming. Although this problem has been thoroughly investigated in the classical optimization framework, it still remains unaddressed as how to sustain throughput competitive to the optimum under highly dynamic peer churning. We propose an online distributed peer selection algorithm based on “shortestpath” routing where the overlay edge length is an asymptotic function of its traffic load. This basic algorithm is further extended under practical settings such as multi-parent streaming, admission control, delay constraint, and simplified topology. In all above settings, we prove approximation bound of our algorithm to the optimal throughput. Through evaluation under different topological setups and peer churning sequences, we show our solution to consistently deliver competitive throughput, which greatly outperform its theoretical bound.