On The Issues Of Supporting On-Demand Streaming Application Over Peer-to-Peer Networks

Abstract

Bandwidth and resource constraints at the server side is a limitation for deployment of streaming media applications. Resource constraints at the server side often leads to saturation of resources during sudden increase in requests. End System Multicast (ESM) is used to overcome the problem of resource saturation. Resources such as storage, bandwidth available at the end systems are utilized to deliver streaming media. In ESM, the end-systems (also known as peers) form a network which is commonly known as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. These peers that receive the stream in turn act as routable components and forward the stream to other requests. These peers do not possess server like characteristics. The peers differ from the server in the following ways: (a) they join and exit the system at will (b) unlike servers, they are not reliable source of media. This induces instability in the network. Therefore, streaming media solution over such unstable peer network is a challenging task. Two kinds of media streaming is supported by ESM, namely, live streaming media and on-demand streaming media. ESM is well studied to support live streaming media. In this thesis we explore the effectiveness of using ESM to support on-demand streaming media over P2P network. There are two major issues to support on-demand streaming video.They are: (a)unlike live streaming, every request should be served from the beginning of the stream and (b) instability in the network due to peer characteristics (particularly transience of peers). In our work, late arriving peers can join the existing stream if the initial segments can be served to these peers. In this scheme, a single stream is used to serve multiple requests and therefore the throughput increases. We propose patching mechanism in which the initial segments of media are temporarily cached in the peers as patches. The peers as they join, contribute storage and this storage space is used to cache the initial segments. The patching mechanism is controlled by Expanding Window Control Protocol (EWCP). EWCP defines a “virtual window” that logically represents the aggregated cache contributed by the peers. The window expands as the peer contribute more resources. Larger the window size more is the number of clients that can be served by a single stream. GAP is formed when contiguous segments of media is lost. GAP limits the expansion of the virtual window. We explore the conditions that lead to the formation of GAP. GAP is formed due to the transience and non-cooperation of peers. Transience of peers coupled with real time nature of the application requires fast failure recovery algorithms and methods to overcome loss of media segments. We propose an efficient peer management protocol that provides constant failure recovery time. We explore several redundancy techniques to overcome the problem of loss of video segments during transience of peers. Peer characteristics (duration, resource contribution etc.) have significant impact on performance.The design of peer management protocol must include peer characteristics to increase its effectiveness. In this thesis we present detailed analysis of the relationship between the peer characteristics and performance. Our results indicate that peer characteristics and realtime nature of the application control the performance of the system. Based on our study, we propose algorithms that considers these parameters and increase the performance of the system. Finally, we bring all the pieces of our work together into a comprehensive system architecture for streaming media over P2P networks. We have implemented a prototype Black-Board System (BBS), a distance program utility that reflects the main concepts of our work. We show that algorithms that exploit peer characteristics performs well in P2P networks.