Mesh based P2P video streaming with a distributed incentive mechanism

P2P video streaming is a cost effective and scalable alternative for client-server based video delivery over the Internet. In P2P video streaming schemes, the Internet peers contribute their bandwidth for data dissemination in a multicast group. Since the performance of a P2P streaming system is dependent on contribution of the group members, free riders is one of the main challenges of such systems. Free riders are some selfish peers that do not upload any data to the other peers while downloading from the network. Therefore, designing incentive mechanisms for P2P streaming systems is essential. In this paper we designed and proposed an incentive mechanism for mesh based P2P video streaming. The proposed approach includes two parts. In the first part, the contribution of the peers in the network is measured and maintained in a distributed fashion, and in the second part, differentiated service is provided for the peers based on their contribution. We simulated the proposed approach and the results show the efficiency of the proposed mechanism in improving the overall quality of the perceived video in the group.