Video management in peer-to-peer systems

Providing scalable video services in a peer-to-peer (P2P) environment is challenging. Since videos are typically large and require high communication bandwidth for delivery, many peers may be unwilling to cache them in whole to serve others. In this paper, the authors addressed two fundamental research problems in providing scalable P2P video services, namely (1) how a host can find enough video pieces, which may scatter among the whole system, to assemble a complete video, and (2) given a limited buffer size, what part of a video a host should cache. A new distributed video management technique was proposed. This scheme organizes hosts into a number of cells, each of which is a distinct set of hosts which together can supply a video in its entirety. A client looking for a video can stop its search as soon as it finds a host that caches any part of the video. Caching operations can be coordinated within each cell to balance data redundancy in the system. The extensive study on a Gnutella-like simulation network shows convincingly the performance advantage of the new scheme.