Adaptive receiver-driven streaming from multiple senders

Abstract

This paper presents the design and evaluation of an adaptive streaming mechanism from multiple senders to a single receiver in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, called P2P Adaptive Layered Streaming, or PALS. PALS is a receiver-driven mechanism. It enables a receiver peer to orchestrate quality adaptive streaming of a single, layer-encoded video stream from multiple congestion-controlled senders, and is able to support a spectrum of noninteractive streaming applications. The primary challenge in the design of a streaming mechanism from multiple senders is that available bandwidth from individual peers is not known a priori, and could significantly change during delivery. In PALS, the receiver periodically performs quality adaptation based on the aggregate bandwidth from all senders to determine: (i) the overall quality (i.e number of layers) that can be collectively delivered by all senders, and more importantly (ii) the specific subset of packets that should be delivered by individual senders in order to gracefully cope with any sudden change in their bandwidth. Our detailed simulation-based evaluations illustrate that PALS can effectively cope with several angles of dynamics in the system including: bandwidth variations, peer participation, and partially available content at different peers. We also demonstrate the importance of coordination among senders and examine key design tradeoffs for the PALS mechanism.