Scalable control of bandwidth resources in P2P live streaming

Abstract

Currently commercial live video streaming systems are based either on a typical client-server or on a peer-to-peer architecture. The former outperforms in terms of stability and quality of service, provided that the system is not stretched beyond its limits, while the latter is scalable and has a much lower cost of operation with regards to the required bandwidth resources. In this paper, we propose a hybrid architecture that combines the best of both worlds. In order to achieve this we developed a scalable mechanism that monitors dynamically the total available bandwidth of the system and a distributed control strategy that dynamically allocates the required bandwidth. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work that applies control theory to P2P live streaming systems. Additionally we provide analytical proof of stability properties of our control strategy and we demonstrate some preliminary results.