Improving Throughput and Node Proximity of P2P Live Video Streaming through Overlay Adaptation

Abstract

Due to the heterogeneity of the environment, in which hosts may have different bandwidth capacities and network distances between hosts vary, current mesh-based multicast protocols for video streaming over the Internet tend to inefficiently utilise the available bandwidth and often transfer large amounts of data between distant hosts. This limits system throughput, which results in reduced video quality, and imposes significant costs on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) caused by network traffic outside a provider's own network. This paper presents MeshTV, a mesh-based peerto-peer (p2p) multicast protocol for streaming live video from a transmitter to numerous viewers. MeshTV proposes an algorithm for adapting the mesh overlay in which nodes explore their possible neighbour nodes and select neighbours so that data throughput is optimised and data is transmitted between nearby (low-latency) nodes, typically within the same ISP thus reducing the costs to ISPs. Our evaluation demonstrates that the adaptation algorithm used in MeshTV can improve video streaming throughput by over 100% and typically reduces the distances (network latencies) between interacting nodes by 50% compared to unoptimised mesh overlays.

Tree-Based Analysis of Mesh Overlays for Peer-to-Peer Streaming

“…In our previous research on mesh overlay adaptation [10,11], we identified that completely random mesh overlays limit the network throughput by underutilising the available upload bandwidth at peers. Limited network throughput in turn reduces possible video streaming rates and the corresponding video quality.…”

Managing Peer-to-Peer Live Streaming Applications

“…Complete details of this p2p protocol are available in [16]. In the following subsections we present each communication subcomponent in our system.…”

“…In this section, we present an initial evaluation of the communication layer of the MeshTV architecture encompassing the previously highlighted p2p protocol [16]. This evaluation was carried out in ns-2 [19].…”