The current Peer-to-Peer (P2P) live streaming networks can be generally classified into two categories: tree-based and data-driven. The tree-based approach suffers from three limitations: interruptive delivery due to failures of high level nodes, unfair uploading (outgoing) bandwidth utilization in leaf nodes and bandwidth bottleneck in nodes near the root. The data driven approach has been widely studied recently to tackle the defects of the tree-based approach mentioned above. However the tree-based approach still has its advantages: deterministic delivery path length and predictable delay, and natural support to PUSH mode content delivery. Because of these advantages the tree-based approach will not be simply replaced by the data-driven approach. Based on this consideration, we propose a cluster-based approach to remedy the disadvantages of the normal tree-based approach and meanwhile retain its advantages as much as possible. By grouping peers into clusters, the content delivery tree constructed by clusters can maintain a stable overlay structure and transmission direction in a dynamic network environment. Simulation results show that our approach can effectively overcome the shortages of the single tree-based approach and outperform the data-driven approach in terms of deterministic content delivery path and predictable path length.
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