Overlay network for the distribution of streaming media

Overlay networks create a structured virtual topology above the basic transport protocol level. It allows implementing network services that are not totally tied to the underlying network infrastructure. Many overlay network protocols have been proposed to organize nodes into various topologies with emphasis on different networking properties. Presently there are a lot of services and applications implemented on these overlay based architectures. In this paper, the authors present an overlay based network architecture for media streaming. It allows media to be streamed to many destinations by duplicating the stream on the way down without getting it from original source at every time. The media streamed is received by downstream hosts from the nearest upstream host instead of original source. For the efficient management of the overlay network, the authors have designed two protocols, namely the Cluster Protocol and the Backbone Protocol. These protocols manage the hosts in the network without affecting the Quality of Service while the hosts are allowed to join or leave the network at any time.