Reducing or minimizing delays in peer-to-peer communications such as peer-to-peer video streaming

摘要

A new P2P streaming method and apparatus disseminates video chunks to all peers with the minimum (or at least reduced) delay. After obtaining a new video chunk, a peer keeps transmitting (uploading) that video chunk to other peers until all peers receive it. The approach quickly increases the aggregate bandwidth that can be utilized to transmit a video chunk. For example, the aggregate peer bandwidth used to transmit a video chunk can double every time slot. For a homogeneous P2P streaming system with N peers, a time slot is defined as a unit of the single chunk transmission delay between two peers. Using the P2P streaming method, a video chunk can be disseminated to all peers within 1+log₂ N time slots.