On the Design of Incentive-Aware P2P Streaming
Tianhao Qiu, Ioanis Nikolaidis, Fulu Li · 2007
We study peer–to–peer (P2P) multicast streaming protocols for high bandwidth streams to large numbers of heterogeneous and transient users. First, the shortcomings of tree–based P2P schemes are discussed. Subsequently, a scalable swarm–based scheme is introduced that avoids maintaining a rigid logical topology. Peers self–organize into an unstructured overlay in an ad-hoc fashion. Stream data are divided into small– sized units and distributed in a fashion that fully utilizes the upload capacity of all peers. A credit–based incentive scheme is introduced to encourage peers to contribute their capacity. The incentive scheme operates based exclusively on local information. We evaluate the proposed scheme through simulations in a dynamic and heterogeneous environment. A key benefit of the proposed scheme is its ability to operate under resource– constrained conditions where traditional tree–based approaches typically fail.