Topology-Aware Peer-to-Peer On-demand Streaming

In this paper, we consider large-scale high-bandwidth on-demand media streaming in a dynamic and heterogeneous environment. We present MetaStream, a scalable and distributed content discovery protocol that enables clients across the Internet to self-organize into a topology-aware overlay network, in which they can “cache and relay” a stream among nearby peers. We present the design and implementation of MetaStream and show experimental results obtained in a large-scale emulated environment. Our evaluation shows that MetaStream distributes relaying load among the clients in a topology-aware manner, imposing low link cost to the underlying network and low streaming load on the media server. MetaStream is also highly resilient to node or network failures and is capable of quickly recovering the streaming quality at clients even at high failure rates.