Virtual theater network: Enabling large-scale peer-to-peer streaming service

This research paper addresses three technical challenges associated with the design of a large-scale, peer-to-peer, high-volume, streaming video distribution network: 1) contributions from peers with limited transmit bandwidth capacity, 2) advertisement and discovery of time-bounded video frame availability, and 3) design of P2P community structure that enables above functionalities. To address above issues, we propose a video distribution model based on a hybrid architecture between clientserver and peer-to-peer computing. In this model, a video is divided into a series of small segments. It employs a scheduling scheme through which users with excess bandwidth and buffer space may retrieve video segments from multiple sources at or below the nominal streaming rate. The model also employs an advertisement and discovery scheme through which users can share their complete sequence of time-varying video segment availability information in one advertisement and one query. The simulation study shows that the proposed model greatly alleviates the bandwidth requirement of the video distribution server, especially when the number of participating users grows large. As much as 90% of load reduction was observed in some experiments when compared to a traditional client-server based video distribution model.