Enhancing P2P overlay network architecture for live multimedia streaming

Abstract

The number of live multimedia streaming applications is increasing, explaining the use of many overlay network topologies. Application-layer multicast (ALM) that it is a feasible alternative to multimedia stream has attracted considerable attention. However, a serious problem of ALM is that the multicast tree may be fragile, and peer failure causes tree partitions. This work presents a novel Hierarchical Ring Tree (HRT) architecture for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) live multimedia streaming. The proposed architecture combines ring-based and tree-based structures in a robust, scalable, reliable and resilient structure that can be used practically as an ALM topology. When peers enter or leave the system, the topology can be recovered rapidly such that live multimedia stream can be delivered smoothly with a low latency. The proposed HRT topology is maintained efficiently without splitting or merging trees. The performance of the proposed architecture and algorithms is evaluated experimentally. Experimental results indicate that the proposed topology can be used in a high-churn P2P network with a small delay. Simulation and experiment results reveal that the proposed architecture has a lower overhead than the ZIGZAG approach when handling peers’ joining or leaving, exhibits faster recovery, better quality-of-service during streaming, and a more robust topology, even with an extremely high number of peers joining/leaving.