BulkTree: an overlay network architecture for live media streaming

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are now very popular. Current P2P systems are broadly of two kinds, structured and unstructured. The tree structured P2P systems used technologies such as distributed hash tables (DHT) and hierarchical clustering can search the required target quickly, however, in a tree, the internal node has a higher load and its leave or crash often causes a large population of its offspring's problems, so that in the highly dynamic Internet environment the tree structure may still suffer frequent breaks. On the other hand, most widely used unstructured P2P networks rely on central directory servers or massive message flooding, clearly not scalable. So, we consider both of the above systems' advantages and disadvantages and realize that in the P2P systems one node may fail easily, but that when a number of nodes organized as a set, which we call "super node", the set is robust. Super nodes can be created and updated aware of topology-aware, and used with simple protocol such as flooding or "servers" to exchange information. Furthermore the entire robust super node can be organized into exquisite tree structure. By using this overlay network architecture, P2P systems are robust, efficient, scalable and secure. The simulation results demonstrated that our architecture greatly reduces the alteration time of the structure while decreasing the average delay time, compared to the common tree structure.

An ALM Model for Streaming Media Service in P2P-SIP Network

Application layer multicast (ALM) has been widely applied in Internet, as a substitute for IP multicast. However, it causes network load to increase because it adopts unicast in data transmission, which limits the application. In this article, in order to improve the ALM performance in P2P-SIP network, an ALM model was proposed which reduced network load via merging messages in concast mode. Finally network simulations prove that this model has better benefit on single node load and average network load. Therefore, it is suitable for streaming media service in P2P-SIP Network.

Research on Video on Demand Based on P2P Network

A P2P approaches to extend the ability of Video on Demand systems to serve more users. In the proposed system users share with each other the media data obtained and the media server is no longer the only source to get data from, thereby, the load on the media server could be greatly alleviated and the overall system capacity increases and more users could be served. The P2P streaming system introduces efficient searching;data transfer dynamically monitoring and initial buffering to maintain a high quality of playback. Its provider selection policy helps to reduce the load of the underlying network by avoiding remote data transfer.

Efficient User Authentication and Key Management for Peer-to-Peer Live Streaming Systems

Recent development of the peer-to-peer （P2P） live streaming technique has brought unprecedented new momentum to the Internet with the characters of effective, scalable, and low cost. However, before these applications can be successfully deployed as commercial applications, efficient access control mechanisms are needed. This work based on earlier research of the secure streaming architecture in Trust- Stream, analyzes how to ensure that only authorized users can access the original media in the P2P live streaming system by adopting a user authentication and key management scheme. The major features of this system include （1） the management server issues each authorized user a unique public key certificate, （2） the one-way hash chain extends the certificate＇s lifetime, （3） the original media is encrypted by the session key and delivered to the communication group, and （4） the session key is periodically updated and distributed with the media. Finally, analyses and test results show that scheme provides a secure, scalable, reliable, and efficient access control solution for P2P live streaming systems.

Strategies of Collaboration in Multi-Swarm Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution

In modern Peer-to-Peer （P2P） content distribution applications, multiple swarms typically exist, each corresponding to the dissemination of one content among interested peers. A common design in the existing P2P applications is to allow peers in one swarm to help each other, while different swarms are only coupled when sharing the upload bandwidth at the dedicated content servers/publishers. In recent years, a number of proposals have emerged which advocate inter-swarm collaboration and resource sharing, where peers in one swarm may contribute their storage and bandwidth resources to help peers in the swarm of another content. Such inter-swarm collaboration can improve content availability and optimize resource uti- lization in the entire system, at the cost of additional overhead for content preloading and inter-swarm coor- dination. This paper presents a survey of studies on effective inter-swarm collaboration mechanisms in the existing literature. This paper first discusses strategies of collaboration in P2P file sharing applications, and then presents multi-channel collaborative design for P2P live and Video-on-Demand （VoD） streaming. In particular, this paper elaborates our recent design of collaboration strategies among multiple streaming channels in a P2P VoD system, and shows that the server cost can be reduced by up to 25% while high streaming qualities are guaranteed in the entire system, even during extreme scenarios such as unexpected flash crowds. This paper also discusses representative approaches to implement inter-swarm collaborations in various P2P content distribution systems.