[p2p-hackers] Live P2P Video State of the Art

[Michael Parker]

Hi David,

Recently I came across CoolStreaming at
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~jcliu/Papers/CoolStreaming.pdf, which actually 
utilizes a
swarming algorithm with aggressive scheduling to deliver content, as 
opposed to
the traditional multicast tree you cite. As for being "proven", in the 
academic
paper there they cite that they've had up to 4000 users simultaneously 
use their
prototype implementation. That was in 2004; from what I have heard, this then
went on to be commercialized, simply streaming live feeds straight from
television networks. This didn't go over so well with the networks, which then
shut the venture down, and now the commercialized project remains in limbo. It
was mainly popular in Europe, used to stream feeds of soccer games live. (This
is all again hearsay -- if any Europeans could set the record straight, that
would be nice. In the meantime, Google "coolstreaming" to see its remnants.)

I think a few months back I actually e-mailed the paper authors, trying to get
the Python prototype they used on PlanetLab... I didn't get a response, 
perhaps
I should try again.

- Mike


Quoting David Barrett <dbarrett at quinthar.com>:

> We've talked at length about massively scalable file transfer, but 
> we've generally presumed fixed-length, pre-recorded files (ie, the 
> file is available in entirety before sharing).  I'm curious if you 
> have experience or ideas around "live" streaming of content 
> simultaneous to its recording/creation.
>
> Clearly, this isn't a new field, and streaming architectures abound.  
> But while there has been extensive innovation in file sharing (DHTs, 
> merkle trees, swarming downloads), I haven't heard much innovation 
> with live streaming content.
>
> So far as I know (but I'm asking you to prove me wrong), the state of 
> the art in audio/video streaming is still a classic "hierarchy of 
> repeaters", where the broadcaster sends to N receivers, each of which 
> sends to N receivers, and so on.  There are obvious variations on 
> this theme (adaptive fan out, topology optimizations, re-request of 
> dropped data, jitter buffers, etc) but I'm looking for the next major 
> innovation (such as was taken between Napster and Gntella for file 
> sharing).
>
> With this in mind, do you know of any proven techniques (or new 
> research) in grid/swarming delivery of live video?  Which research, 
> projects, or products would you say are demonstrating the state of 
> the art in scalable, adaptive, high-quality video streaming?
>
> -david
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