Decentralized periodic broadcasting for large-scale video streaming

Ka Ki To, Jack Y. B. Lee, S.-H. Gary Chan

Abstract: Periodic broadcasting (PB) schemes are the most promising solution for building large-scale video streaming services. Existing PB schemes are all built around the traditional client-server model. This paper proposes a radically different architecture where only end-user hosts are used to build the PB system, thereby eliminating the need for a central server or even a service provider. Two unique problems pertaining to this decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture is addressed: transmission scheduling and peer synchronization. A new decentralized synchronization algorithm is proposed and results obtained from simulations confirm the architecture's feasibility and performance.