A new mechanism to improve video streaming in P2P networks using helper nodes

Abstract

Peer-to-peer video on demand (P2P-VoD) is a solution to provide video service to a large number of users on the Internet. Due to the upload bandwidth bottleneck of VoD servers, the streaming capacity in the P2P-VoD system is limited. This paper proposes a new mechanism to improve the video streaming in P2P networks by using the idle peers upload bandwidth and storage, which are called helpers. The proposed method uses an XOR mechanism in the VoD server to encode chunks and reduce bandwidth use. The helpers receive encoded chunks from the VoD server and save them in their storage spaces and cooperate in sharing these chunks with the other peers. Simulation results using OMNET++ are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed mechanism in terms of the required upload capacity requirement of the server and deploying the storage and bandwidth of helpers. The results of simulation show that the upload bandwidth usage of the server has been reduced. On the other hand, the proposed method increases the memory usage of helpers.