Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is a recently proposed standard
that offers different versions of the same media content to adapt the delivery
process over the Internet to dynamic bandwidth fluctuations and different user
device capabilities. The peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm for video streaming allows
to leverage the cooperation among peers, guaranteeing to serve every video
request with increased scalability and reduced cost. We propose to combine
these two approaches in a P2P-DASH architecture, exploiting the potentiality of
both. The new platform is made of several swarms, and a different DASH
representation is streamed within each of them; unlike client-server DASH
architectures, where each client autonomously selects which version to download
according to current network conditions and to its device resources, we put
forth a new rate control strategy implemented at peer site to maintain a good
viewing quality to the local user and to simultaneously guarantee the
successful operation of the P2P swarms. The effectiveness of the solution is
demonstrated through simulation and it indicates that the P2P-DASH platform is
able to warrant its users a very good performance, much more satisfying than in
a conventional P2P environment where DASH is not employed. Through a comparison
with a reference DASH system modeled via the Integer Linear Programming (ILP)
approach, the new system is shown to outperform such reference architecture. To
further validate the proposal, both in terms of robustness and scalability,
system behavior is investigated in the critical condition of a flash crowd,
showing that the strong upsurge of new users can be successfully revealed and
gradually accommodated.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures, this work has been submitted to the IEEE
journal on selected Area in Communication
