On Reducing Delay in Mesh-Based P2P Streaming: A Mesh-Push Approach

Zheng LIU
Kaiping XUE
Peilin HONG

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E95-B    No.2    pp.426-434
Publication Date: 2012/02/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E95.B.426
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Network
Keyword: 
peer-to-peer,  streaming delay,  mesh topology,  mesh-push schedule,  

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Summary: 
The peer-assisted streaming paradigm has been widely employed to distribute live video data on the internet recently. In general, the mesh-based pull approach is more robust and efficient than the tree-based push approach. However, pull protocol brings about longer streaming delay, which is caused by the handshaking process of advertising buffer map message, sending request message and scheduling of the data block. In this paper, we propose a new approach, mesh-push, to address this issue. Different from the traditional pull approach, mesh-push implements block scheduling algorithm at sender side, where the block transmission is initiated by the sender rather than by the receiver. We first formulate the optimal upload bandwidth utilization problem, then present the mesh-push approach, in which a token protocol is designed to avoid block redundancy; a min-cost flow model is employed to derive the optimal scheduling for the push peer; and a push peer selection algorithm is introduced to reduce control overhead. Finally, we evaluate mesh-push through simulation, the results of which show mesh-push outperforms the pull scheduling in streaming delay, and achieves comparable delivery ratio at the same time.