Study of BitTorrent based Video on Demand Systems

BitTorrent (BT) is one of the most successful and effective mechanisms for distributing large volumes of content over the Internet. One of the primary reasons behind its success is its robustness to 'free-riding', in which peers manage to get a good download rate in spite of not uploading the content to others. It works well even in flash-crowd scenarios. In fact, more the crowd better is its performance. Although BT was primarily designed for distributing time-insensitive content, in this paper we study the modifications that could be performed in BT algorithms to support streaming. Video-on-demand (VoD) has become an immensely popular Internet service in recent years. But due to its high bandwidth requirements and popularity, it is also a costly service to provide. In this paper we consider the design and potential benefits of using BT for video streaming. Various BT-like video streaming systems have been reviewed and suggestions have been made for improving their performance.