Improving Peer-to-Peer Video Systems

Abstract

Video Streaming is nowadays the Internet’s biggest source of consumer traffic. Traditional content providers rely on centralised client-server model for distributing their video streaming content. The current generation is moving from being passive viewers, or content consumers, to active content producers, and the traditional content distribution infrastructure needs to change and adapt. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems have proven to be a valuable solution for distributing content to a wide audience. However, they have been designed for file-sharing, and therefore require enhancements and modifications to fulfill the needs of video streaming distribution. In this thesis, we improve fully distributed P2P streaming systems through the design and evaluation of architectures and algorithms. We focus on three major challenges. First, we address the diversity of devices and connections in today’s Internet by describing the architecture for distributing multi bit-rate streaming content. Secondly, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel P2P streaming protocol specifically crafted to distribute streaming content. Finally, we provide a solution for increasing the privacy of P2P users without affecting their performance.