TCMM: Hybrid Overlay Strategy for P2P Live Streaming Services

Hai Jin, Xuping Tu, Chao Zhang, Ke Liu, Xiaofei Liao

Abstract: This paper proposes an application level multicast approach called Tree-Control-Mesh-Media (TCMM) to distribute live media streams to a large number of users efficiently. In TCMM, transmissions of media data are controlled by two independent relay protocols in a collaborative manner. One protocol here is used to help a peer to identify its neighbor peers using the location information while the other one is used to deliver of media stream among the peers. The two protocols organize all peers into two graphs with different topologies that the communications can benefit a lot from the hybrid control topology. We have studied the performance of TCMM approach using different simulation cases. The experimental results have shown that the broadcasting performance of TCMM can achieve that of a well constructed mesh network while it can adapt more dynamic and irregular network environment. We also see that the penalty of introducing two protocols is rarely low which implies the high scalability of TCMM.