Liquidstream II - scalable P2P overlay optimization with adaptive minimal server assistance for stable and efficient video on demand

In recent years, a number of research efforts have focused on effective and stable P2P architectures aiming at large scale and low bandwidth cost, real time video streaming systems. In our work, we consider a BitTorrent-like VoD system and try to answer the following questions: (1) how we can dynamically manage a P2P overlay using distributed-scalable algorithms in order to exploit the available upload bandwidth of highly heterogeneous participating peers and (2) how media servers (cloud) can minimize the amount of the bandwidth they offer while ensuring uninterrupted video playback. To illustrate the success of our approach, we have developed a network level P2P VoD packet simulator for demonstrating the efficiency, scalability and stability of our work under variant and dynamic conditions.