Redesigning multi-channel P2P live video systems with View-Upload Decoupling

In current multi-channel P2P live video systems, there are several fundamental performance problems including exceedingly-large channel switching delays, long playback lags, and poor performance for less popular channels. These performance problems primarily stem from two intrinsic characteristics of multi-channel P2P video systems: channel churn and channel-resource imbalance. In this paper, we propose a radically different cross-channel P2P streaming framework, called View-Upload Decoupling (VUD). VUD strictly decouples peer downloading from uploading, bringing stability to multi-channel systems and enabling cross-channel resource sharing. We propose a set of peer assignment and bandwidth allocation algorithms to properly provision bandwidth among channels, and introduce substream-swarming to reduce the bandwidth overhead. We evaluate the performance of VUD via extensive simulations as well with a PlanetLab implementation. Our simulation and PlanetLab results show that VUD is resilient to channel churn, and achieves lower switching delay and better streaming quality. In particular, the streaming quality of small channels is greatly improved.     

一种分层P2 P流媒体系统重叠网的构建策略

基于Peer-to-Peer(P2P)技术的流媒体应用具有部署效率高及可扩展性好等突出优势。而采用分层视频编码技术的P2P流媒体系统把原视频流分解为多个视频层数据进行分发,让节点能够选择与自己带宽资源相匹配的视频质量,使其很好地适应节点的异构性。但是各分层视频数据传输的路径存在较大差异,使重叠网构建策略面临更大的挑战。因此定义了基于分层视频编码技术环境下的P2P流媒体重叠网络构建问题,并证明该问题是一个NP难问题。提出了一种构建重叠网的集中启发式算法,同时还提出了一种基于视频组(Streaming Group)的分布式重叠网络构建策略。通过大规模网络仿真实验验证了基于该分布式重叠网构建策略的分层流媒体系统具备低服务器带宽占用、高数据获取率等优点。     

Scalable playback rate control in P2P live streaming systems

Current commercial live video streaming systems are based either on a typical client–server (cloud) or on a peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture. The former architecture is preferred for stability and QoS, provided that the system is not stretched beyond its bandwidth capacity, while the latter is scalable with small bandwidth and management cost. In this paper, we propose a P2P live streaming architecture in which by adapting dynamically the playback rate we guarantee that peers receive the stream even in cases where the total upload bandwidth changes very abruptly. In order to achieve this we develop a scalable mechanism that by probing only a small subset of peers monitors dynamically the total available bandwidth resources and a playback rate control mechanism that dynamically adapts playback rate to the aforementioned resources. We model analytically the relationship between the playback rate and the available bandwidth resources by using difference equations and in this way we are able to apply a control theoretical approach. We also quantify monitoring inaccuracies and dynamic bandwidth changes and we calculate dynamically, as a function of these, the maximum playback rate for which the proposed system able to guarantee the uninterrupted and complete distribution of the stream. Finally, we evaluate the control strategy and the theoretical model in a packet level simulator of a complete P2P live streaming system that we designed in OPNET Modeler. Our evaluation results show the uninterrupted and complete stream delivery (every peer receives more than 99 % of video blocks in every scenario) even in very adverse bandwidth changes.     

移动对等直播流媒体系统的服务质量保证机制研究

随着移动网络及移动智能终端的发展和日益普及,移动对等(P2P)网络流媒体方面的研究已成为当前的热点。然而,P2P流媒体的移动化面临两大问题,一是流媒体的差异化服务,二是终端移动过程中的服务质量保证。针对终端的差异性,本文提出了自适应多码率服务的思想,在一个P2P节目流拓扑中,发布多个子流,用户根据自己的网络状况和能力,缓冲全部或者部分子流,并根据网络环境的变化,动态地改变自身缓冲和播放的流,为邻居节点提供差异化的服务;同时提出了一种跨域移动服务质量保证机制,包括数据预缓存、数据暂存等策略。实验证明上述方法能有效提高移动对等直播流媒体系统的服务质量。     

A P4P-integrated data-driven P2P system for the live multimedia streaming service

The Proactive network Provider Participation for the P2P (P4P) architecture deploys central servers, which perceives network status and provides peering suggestions to P2P systems in order to achieve better network resource utilization while supporting best possible application performance. However, P4P alone may not be able to make appropriate peering suggestions for live multimedia streaming since it does not include mechanisms to reflect some of the parameters that are important to the QoS of live multimedia streaming such as upload bandwidth and stability of a peer as a stream deliverer. Furthermore, peer synchronization and parent replacement in the middle of a session, which are critical issues to the QoS of live multimedia streaming, are also left as the matters to be dealt with by the P2P systems alone. Most of the existing data-driven P2P systems leverage periodic information exchanges among neighboring peers in order to cope with these problems, which may incur long delay and high control overhead. In this paper, we proposed P4P-integrated data-driven P2P system for live multimedia streaming service. The proposed system includes not only the peering suggestion mechanism appropriate for live multimedia streaming but also the peer synchronization and parent replacement mechanisms, which exploit the centralized P4P framework and do not require periodic control information exchanges. We implemented the system in NS-2 simulator and compared its performance to the P4P and existing data-driven P2P systems. The results from experiments show that the proposed system enhances QoS compared to the existing data-driven P2P systems while maintaining the same level of network efficiency of the original P4P.     

支持高视频播放率的层次化P2P流媒体系统

目前的P2P流媒体系统具有自组织、容错性和匿名性等优点,但是在健壮性和对高视频播放率的有效支持方面还存在一些问题。本文提出了一种层次化P2P流媒体系统(HPSS)来支持高视频播放率,节点根据带宽和延迟分组聚类,在系统中形成多级层次结构,从视频源服务器来取得视频数据。通过积极地平衡聚类中的上传能力,既能够有效地解决P2P系统中支持高视频播放率的问题,提供接近一个P2P系统能够达到的最大流媒体速率,同时保证系统具有良好的健壮性,在聚类的头节点失效的情况下,不降低整个系统的流媒体速率。最后通过仿真实验证明了HPSS的上述优点。     

The interleaved video frame distribution for P2P-based VoD system with VCR functionality

The peer-to-peer (P2P) network structure is widely employed for video streaming applications because of its high stability, flexible extensibility, and ability to distribute data stream loading among different peer nodes. Numerous P2P schemes have been proposed for video on demand (VoD) applications. High video source searching cost and long response latency are always issues in dealing with VCR functionality, such as jump and fast-forward/rewind, because of asynchronous interactive and random join/leave behaviors of end users. To overcome this bottleneck, an interleaved video frame distribution (IVFD) scheme is proposed to support full VCR functionality in a P2P environment without searching for new sources. Instead of acquiring video stream data from a single parent peer in the published schemes, each child peer in the IVFD scheme can simultaneously acquire interleaved video data from multiple parent peers. When a client peer carries out arbitrary VCR operations, such as jump or fast-forward/rewind, its parent peers are still able to provide intermittent video stream data for the client peer; thus, no video source search is necessary. Simulation results reveal excellent load distribution performance and response latency for VCR operations in the proposed IVFD scheme.     

P2P Object-based adaptivE Multimedia Streaming (POEMS)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigm has recently gained tremendous attraction and is widely used for content distribution and sharing. The future multimedia communication applications have to support the user’s needs, the terminal capabilities, the content specification and the underlying networking technologies. They should be network-aware, topology-aware, and end-user-centric. Thus, in this paper, we use the characteristics of the object-based encoding scheme and P2P network topology to propose adaptive content delivery architecture for P2P networks. We propose an efficient mechanism for transmission of real-time content over P2P networks, called POEMS (P2P Object-based adaptivE Multimedia Streaming). This object-based audio-visual quality adaptive mechanism over P2P networks is media-aware, network-aware, and user-centric that is carried-out through (1) selection of appropriate sending peers willing to participate in the streaming mechanism, (2) organization of sending peers by constructing an overlay network to facilitate content delivery and adaptation, (3) dynamicity management of peers when some peer enters or leaves the system to maintain an acceptable level of perceived video quality, and (4) ensuring the end-to-end QoS (Quality of Services) by orchestrating the overall streaming mechanism. The obtained results demonstrate that combining content adaptation using object-based encoding and advance network-aware peers selection based on peer monitoring leads to intelligent, efficient, and large-scale support of multimedia services over complex network architectures.

SmartPeerCast: a Smart QoS driven P2P live streaming framework

The P2P swarm technologies have been shown to be very efficient for medium scale content distribution systems in the last few years, such as the file sharing and video-on-demand (VOD) applications. However it is still an open topic about how to deploy the P2P paradigm for the real time video broadcasting (RTVB) applications. The P2P RTVB application is different from the cache based P2P system because it has more stringent restrictions for startup time and packet loss ratio. In this paper, an adaptive media broadcasting P2P framework named SmartPeerCast which employs the media transrating service to control the quality of service (QoS), is proposed. SmartPeerCast achieves a network awareness, codec awareness, and high performance RTVB service with four key designs: (1) It groups the newly joined peers into different quality clusters by their uploading capability. This clustering mechanism avoids the bandwidth bottleneck between the heterogeneous peers of the overall P2P overlay by only forwarding the same quality stream over the peers in the same cluster. (2) The streaming quality is adjusted adaptively between the sending and the receiving peers by a Smart QoS algorithm to compensate for the network jitters to reduce the receiving peer’s playback jitter. (3) The receiving peer monitors the data forwarding QoS of the sending peer to select the best suitable parent node dynamically. The SmartPeerCast uses this Smart QoS framework to implement an incentive mechanism to award the peers with high uploading contributions by migrating them to a higher quality cluster. (4) A transrating engine is used at the leaf nodes of the high quality cluster to forward the stream with suitable bits rate to the nodes of the low quality cluster; this transrating service not only can fully utilize the uploading bandwidth of the peers in the higher quality cluster but also avoids the bandwidth bottleneck of stream forwarding between the heterogeneous peers. Our experiment results and the real deployment show that SmartPeerCast can eliminate the bandwidth bottleneck and content bottleneck between the heterogeneous peers with a smaller startup time and packet loss and it is a high performance and medium scale P2P RTVB framework.     

P2P流媒体数据调度研究综述

P2P流媒体通过利用网络上普通主机节点的资源来提供流媒体数据服务,是一种扩展性好、性价比高的流媒体服务体系。数据调度是P2P流媒体研究中的核心问题,流媒体中严格的服务质量要求、Peer节点状态的不稳定性以及其带宽资源的有限性是其面临的主要挑战。介绍了近几年来该领域基于单播树、多组播树和随机拓扑三类典型的数据调度策略的原理特点和Peer节点搜索定位技术的研究进展,指出了未来的几种研究方向。     

结合IP组播的P2P流媒体直播系统

在流媒体系统中利用P2P技术与IP组播各自的优势,提出了一种结合IP组播的P2P流媒体直播系统,不仅能够充分利用用户节点的资源,减轻流媒体服务器与骨干网的负载,提高系统的可扩展性和可用性,而且有效地提高了P2P流媒体直播系统中视频流的服务质量。     

基于P2P网络的大规模视频直播系统

介绍了一种基于P2P(peer-to-peer)网络的大规模视频直播系统Gridmedia.该系统采用Gossip协议构建无结构的应用层覆盖网络,每个节点可以独立地选择自己的伙伴节点.在覆盖网络上,每个节点通过一种推拉结合的流传输策略从邻居节点获取数据.与DONet中的纯拉策略相比,推拉结合策略大幅度减小了终端用户观看视频的延迟,并有效降低了直播系统的控制开销.PlanetLab上的大量实验充分表明了该策略的有效性.Gridmedia的原型系统通过300Kbps的视频码流对2005年春节联欢晚会进行了全球互联网直播.晚会期间,全球范围内有超过500 000人次通过系统观看了直播,最高在线人数达到了15 239人,充分验证了系统的性能.     

Hierarchically Clustered P2P Video Streaming: Design,implementation, and evaluation

P2P based live streaming has been gaining popularity. The new generation P2P live streaming systems not only attract a large number of viewers, but also support better video quality by streaming the content at higher bit-rate. In this paper, we propose a novel P2P streaming framework, called Hierarchically Clustered P2P Video Streaming, or HCPS, that can support the streaming rate approaching the optimal upper bound while accommodating large viewer population. The scalability comes with the hierarchical overlay architecture by grouping peers into clusters and forming a hierarchy among them. Peers are assigned to appropriate cluster so as to balance the bandwidth resources across clusters and maximize the supportable streaming rate. Furthermore, individual peers perform distributed queue-based scheduling algorithms to determine how to retrieve data chunks from source and neighboring peers, and how to utilize its uplink bandwidth to serve data chunks to other peers. We show that queue-based scheduling algorithms allow to fully utilize peers’ uplink bandwidths, and HCPS supports the streaming rate close to the optimum in practical network environment. The prototype of HCPS is implemented and various design issues/tradeoffs are investigated. Experiments over the PlanetLab further demonstrate the effectiveness of HCPS design.     

无线视频传输服务质量研究

在下一代无线通信网络中,以视频传输为主的流媒体业务将成为主要业务之一。着眼于无线视频流服务质量的研究,首先简要介绍了以网络为中心的服务质量控制策略,然后重点分析以终端为中心的速率控制机制,并介绍了目前常用的分组调度算法。     

Adaptive interface selection over cloud-based split-layer video streaming via multi-wireless networks

As mobile devices such as tablet PCs and smartphones proliferate, the online video consumption over a wireless network has been accelerated. From this phenomenon, there are several challenges to provide the video streaming service more efficiently and stably in the heterogeneous mobile environment. In order to guarantee the QoS of real-time HD video services, the steady and reliable wireless mesh is necessary. Furthermore, the video service providers have to maintain the QoS by provisioning streaming servers to respond the clients’ request of different video resolution. In this paper, we propose a reliable cloud-based video delivery scheme with the split-layer SVC encoding and real-time adaptive multi-interface selection over LTE and WiFi links. A split-layer video streaming can effectively scale to manage the required channels on each layer of various client connections. Moreover, split-layer SVC model brings streaming service providers a remarkable opportunity to stream video over multiple interfaces (e.g. WiFi, LTE, etc.) with a separate controlling based on their network status. Through the adaptive interface selection, the proposed system aims to ensure the maximizing video quality which the bandwidth of LTE/WiFi accommodates. In addition, the system offers cost-effective streaming to mobile clients by saving the LTE data consumption. In our system, an adaptive interface selection is developed with two different algorithms, such as INSTANT and EWMA methods. We implemented a prototype of mobile client based on iOS particularly by using iPhone5S. Moreover, we also employ the split-layer SVC encodes in streaming server-side as the add-on module to SVC reference encoding tool in a virtualized environment of KVM hypervisor. We evaluated the proposed system in an emulated and a real-world heterogeneous wireless network environments. The results show that the proposed system not only achieves to guarantee the highest quality of video frames via WiFi and LTE simultaneous connection, but also efficiently saves LTE bandwidth consumption for cost-effectiveness to client-side. Our proposed method provides the highest video quality without deadline misses, while it consumes 50.6% LTE bandwidth of ‘LTE-only’ method and 72.8% of the conventional (non-split) SVC streaming over a real-world mobile environment.     

InstantLeap: an architecture for fast neighbor discovery in large-scale P2P VoD streaming

In large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) video-on-demand (VoD) streaming applications, a fundamental challenge is to quickly locate new supplying peers whenever a VCR command is issued, in order to achieve smooth viewing experiences. For many existing commercial systems which use tracker servers for neighbor discovery, the increasing scale of P2P VoD systems has overloaded the dedicated servers to the point where they cannot accurately identify the suppliers with the desired content and bandwidth. To avoid overloading the servers and achieve instant neighbor discovery over the self-organizing P2P overlay, we design a novel method of organizing peers watching a video. The method features a light-weight indexing architecture to support efficient streaming and fast neighbor discovery at the same time. InstantLeap separates the neighbors at each peer into a streaming neighbor list and a shortcut neighbor list, for streaming and neighbor discovery respectively, which are maintained loosely but effectively based on random neighbor list exchanges. Our analysis shows that InstantLeap achieves an O(1) neighbor discovery efficiency upon any playback “leap” across the media stream in streaming overlays of any size, and low messaging costs for overlay maintenance upon peer join, departure, and VCR operations. We also verify our design with large-scale simulation studies of dynamic P2P VoD systems based on real-world settings.     

UR-aware: Streaming videos over BitTorrent with balanced playback urgency and rareness distribution

In recent years, the BitTorrent (BT) has been one of the most efficient mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) non-realtime content distribution. Many approaches for streaming videos over BT have been proposed by modifying the piece selection policy to cope with the real time requirement. Most of them provide the continuity of video playback at the cost of the variety of pieces on P2P streaming networks. In this paper, we propose the novel urgency-aware BT streaming mechanism, called UR-Aware, which intends to enhance the video streaming efficiency over BT on P2P networks by balancing playback continuity and distribution of piece rareness. There are two sets for piece downloading, called Uset and Rset. The Uset contains the most urgent pieces of video playback, while the Rset contains the rarest pieces. Downloading bandwidth of a peer is dynamically allocated to the two sets based on the number of consecutive pieces beyond these playback position in Uset. Furthermore, to implicitly preserve the continuity of pieces for future playback, consecutive k pieces are grouped as a section which would be selected to insert into Rset based on its rareness. The experimental results show that the UR-Aware has the best performance among other BT streaming approaches in terms of video download time, piece late rate, and network throughput. In addition, the accumulated standard deviation of UR-Aware is closest to that of the native BT among those approaches, which also confirms the superiority of UR-Aware on video streaming over BT.     

An efficient scheduling algorithm for scalable video streaming over P2P networks

During recent years, the Internet has witnessed rapid advancement in peer-to-peer (P2P) media streaming. In these applications, an important issue has been the block scheduling problem, which deals with how each node requests the media data blocks from its neighbors. In most streaming systems, peers are likely to have heterogeneous upload/download bandwidths, leading to the fact that different peers probably perceive different streaming quality. Layered (or scalable) streaming in P2P networks has recently been proposed to address the heterogeneity of the network environment. In this paper, we propose a novel block scheduling scheme that is aimed to address the P2P layered video streaming. We define a soft priority function for each block to be requested by a node in accordance with the block’s significance for video playback. The priority function is unique in that it strikes good balance between different factors, which makes the priority of a block well represent the relative importance of the block over a wide variation of block size between different layers. The block scheduling problem is then transformed to an optimization problem that maximizes the priority sum of the delivered video blocks. We develop both centralized and distributed scheduling algorithms for the problem. Simulation of two popular scalability types has been conducted to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is effective in terms of bandwidth utilization and video quality.     

P2P网络移动流媒体转码方法研究

为解决移动设备异构性影响视频流媒体应用的问题,提出了一种P2P网络移动流媒体的交错分布转码方法.该方法允许多个固定节点为一个移动设备转码,生成多个交错子流给目标移动节点,子流在移动节点上组装,降低了转码对固定节点计算能力的需求.分析了节点失效对分布转码造成的影响,交错子流可以减弱这种影响,强化数据包丢失错误恢复机制.比较了该方法与多描述编码之间的性能差异,实验结果表明,应用该方法移动流媒体在节点失效和不良无线信道条件下鲁棒性好.