Providing Quasi-VoD Using Peer-to-Peer Distribution System

Streaming media based Video-on-Demand (VoD) has become more and more popular in Internet. And Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology has shown being a promising approach, such as in the live video broadcast, because of its potential high scalability. However, traditional media content distribution model is not suitable for large-scale streaming media VoD applications. It is important to find out an effective method with efficient content distribution. After a deep study about Internet network condition and user experience on an experimental P2P VoD system, GridCast, features of a quasi VoD system are defined. A P2P-based streaming media distribution model, named PQVoD (Peer-to-Peer based quasi-VoD, PQVoD) is proposed, which can ensure high play performance through improving the resource utilization among peers. A corresponding prototype based on PQVoD is designed and key issues, such as, tracker protocol, peers management, slice data management and data delivery in peers, etc., are discussed.The main contributions of this paper are:1. A quasi-VoD definition is proposed: quasi-VoD supports beginning to play at arbitrary moment from any marked position divided by a fixed interval, providing low startup delays and ensures high play performance.2. A P2P-based streaming media distribution model is designed to support quasi-VoD, based on the research of file distribution system - BitTorrent and live streaming media distribution system - DONet.3. In PQVoD, a node selection and data scheduling algorithm are invented according to the efficiency of peer's content transmission. 4. A PQVoD prototype system is designed and implemented in this paper.5. Experimental result based on simulation NS2 for PQVoD, shows that PQVoD achieves obvious effect.