p2p live streaming

Paper 1: PULSE: an Adaptive, Incentive-based, Unstructured P2P Live Streaming System

 

The implicit constraints of this application, both on media quality and timeliness of stream reception, are quite challenging when faced together

 

the timeliness refers to the delay between stream source and the stream reception, while the media quality depends on the  completeness of received data before its playback deadline.

 

所谓直播最看重的就是播放的内容时延以及播放体验。前者是指用户看到的视频和视频源在时间上相差太多，一场直播的球赛，别人早就看到进球了，你这两三分中之后才看到，这是不可接受的。后者是指在看一个直播的时候，老是缓冲，或者画面卡主不动，或者画面老是马赛克，这也不可以。

 

我们知道，在做视频直播的时候，往往一个热门的事件，会带来大量的并发请求，这样会给服务器带来巨大压力，甚至让服务器崩溃。为了应对这种flash-crowd， 可以使用两种方法，提前做准备：多准备服务器或者借助CDN进行分流； 使用p2p的网络结构，让终端辅助的进行内容分发。不管哪种方式，都要考虑上面的两个问题，只不过用p2p的方式进行live streaming时，需要做更多的工作。

 

在这片论文中，作者都做了哪些事情呢？

 

1. 采用mesh, unstructured方式构建overlay: data can be freely exchanged among nodes that associate for the purpose, creating a system-wide mesh of data connections. Node associations are driven by pairwise incentives based on implicit feedback information, such as the amount of data exchanged in the recent past and the current reception delay of the stream.

 

2. peer选择策略： with the peer selection strategies used in PULSE, the average length in hops of the data paths on the mesh are comparable to those observed on tree-based overlays. Moreover, due to the higher number of connections that compose the mesh, PULSE is more resilient than typical structured systems against node transience, and is able to support heterogeneous and asymmetrical node capabilities

 

3. incentive-based: primary optimistic tit-for-tat and excess-based altruistic incentive