SUMMARYPeer‐to‐peer (P2P) systems enjoy wide adoption from internet users. Success of P2P architecture is due to its ability to scale and organize dynamically the traffic according to the user resources and requests. However, P2P adoption is constrained in non‐real time applications, like content distribution and file sharing. The major reason behind this fact is the inability of P2P to deliver content within user‐desired bit rates by making optimal use of network resources. In this paper we focus on the solution and implementation of technical problems toward a complete system implementation that delivers live multimedia streaming through P2P architecture by the use of IMS. The content indexing and discovery, the scalable management and the distributed optimization of the graph that connects participating peers, the distributed scheduling mechanisms for data exchange, a scalable monitoring architecture and a bandwidth control mechanism constitute the major components toward a complete scalable multimedia streaming system offering streaming stability and high performance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.