Video-on-Demand over Internet: a survey of existing systems and solutions

Video-on-Demand is a service where movies are delivered to distributed users with low delay and free interactivity. The traditional client/server architecture experiences scalability issues to provide video streaming services, so there have been many proposals of systems, mostly based on a peer-to-peer or on a hybrid server/peer-to-peer solution, to solve this issue. This work presents a survey of the currently existing or proposed systems and solutions, based upon a subset of representative systems, and defines selection criteria allowing to classify these systems. These criteria are based on common questions such as, for example, is it video-on-demand or live streaming, is the architecture based on content delivery network, peer-to-peer or both, is the delivery overlay tree-based or mesh-based, is the system push-based or pull-based, single-stream or multi-streams, does it use data coding, and how do the clients choose their peers. Representative systems are briefly described to give a summarized overview of the proposed solutions, and four ones are analyzed in details. Finally, it is attempted to evaluate the most promising solutions for future experiments. Résumé La vidéo à la demande est un service où des films sont fournis à distance aux utilisateurs avec u

Stochastic Analysis of Self-Sustainability in Peer-Assisted VoDSystems

Abstract—We consider a peer-assisted Video-on-demand system, in which video distribution is supported both by peers caching the whole video and by peers concurrently downloading it. We propose a stochastic fluid framework that allows to characterize the additional bandwidth requested from the servers to satisfy all users watching a given video. We obtain analytical upper bounds to the server bandwidth needed in the case in which users download the video content sequentially. We also present a methodology to obtain exact solutions for special cases of peer upload bandwidth distribution. Our bounds permit to tightly characterize the performance of peer-assisted VoD systems as the number of users increases, for both sequential and nonsequential delivery schemes. In particular, we rigorously prove that the simple sequential scheme is asymptotically optimal both in the bandwidth surplus and in the bandwidth deficit mode, and that peer-assisted systems become totally self-sustaining in the surplus mode as the number of users grows large. I

A P2P Platform for real-time multicast video streaming leveraging on scalable multiple descriptions to cope with bandwidth fluctuations

In the immediate future video distribution applications will increase their diffusion thanks tothe ever-increasing user capabilities and improvements in the Internet access speed and performance.The target of this paper is to propose a content delivery system for real-time streaming services based ona peer-to-peer approach that exploits multicast overlay organization of the peers to address thechallenges due to bandwidth heterogeneity. To improve reliability and flexibility, video is coded using ascalable multiple description approach that allows delivery of sub-streams over multiple trees andallows rate adaptation along the trees as the available bandwidth changes. Moreover, we have deployeda new algorithm for tree-based topology management of the overlay network. In fact, tree based overlaynetworks better perform in terms of end-to-end delay and ordered delivery of video flow packets withrespect to mesh based ones. We also show with a case study that the proposed system works better thansimilar systems using only either multicast or multiple trees

Topology Optimization in Hybrid Tree/Mesh-based Peer-to-Peer Streaming System

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) video streaming is the fastest growing application of the Internet. One of the main challenge is to provide a high quality of service through the dynamic behavior of the network because a peer may join or leave anytime. Currently, P2P streaming network exist two types of users: streaming users - who use mobile devices with 3G/4G connection expect to watch the live video immediately and storage users - who use PC with wired Internet will download and then watch the video later. We realized that the streaming users may stop watching live video after a while if they find the video is out of their interest. Users leaving causes dynamic and affect the data delivery. On the other hand, the storage users that are downloading the video do not have the concern of interest and playback quality, until they start to watch the video. Hence, the storage users are relatively more stable than streaming users. This paper, we investigate the strategies on the topology construction and maintenance of P2P streaming systems with storage users are closer to the broadcaster than streaming users. And also we apply our idea on hybrid push-pull protocol that combines the benefits of pull and push mechanisms for live video delivery to provide better video streaming qualit

Peer-assisted VoD Systems: An Efficient Modeling Framework

We analyze a peer-assisted Video-on-Demand (VoD) system in which users contribute their upload bandwidth to the redistribution of a video that they are downloading or that they have cached locally. Our target is to characterize the additional bandwidth that servers must supply to immediately satisfy all requests to watch a given video. We develop an approximate fluid model to compute the required server bandwidth in the sequential delivery case, as well as in controlled nonsequential swarms. Our approach is able to capture several stochastic effects related to peer churn, upload bandwidth heterogeneity, and nonstationary traffic conditions, which have not been documented or analyzed before. Finally, we provide important hints for the design of efficient peer-assisted VoD systems under server capacity constraints

Development of Campus Video-Conference System Based on Peer-To-Peer Architecture

Peer to Peer (P2P) systems inherently have high scalability, robustness and fault tolerance because there is no centralized server and the network self-organizes itself. This is achieved at the cost of higher latency for locating the resources of interest in the P2P overlay network. This paper describes the design and implementation of campus video conference system based on P2P architecture that was tested within premises of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria. The proposed Campus video conference system is made up of five modules which are the media stream engine, the conferencing control protocol, transmission module, TCP/UDP module and the user interface module. The media stream engine is responsible for audio/video capture and playback, the conferencing control protocol defines a set of conventions governing the structure and behavior of communication messages, the transmission module consists of a peer and a distribution network constituting of the peers also the delivery and exchange of streaming data while the audio manager and video manager use TCP/UDP to broadcast to other peer. The proposed system will offer smooth video conferencing with low delay and seldom and short freezes. It is believed that this videoconference system will bring video telephony to a new level of quality and will lead to a new trend in everyday communications in the university community