Systems and methods for peer-to-peer collaboration to enhance multimedia streaming

摘要

Systems and methods are described for using peer-to-peer collaboration to enhance streaming of multimedia content. A peer-paired pyramid streaming (P³S) architecture is introduced that is a hybrid of a client/server structure and a peer-to-peer structure. Clients are hierarchically organized and those that are in the same level are coupled to form peer-pairs. The peers in a peer-pair cooperate by utilizing a connection between them. Streaming is enhanced by allowing each peer to download different portions of a stream and sharing portions not in possession of the other. Error recovery is enhanced by allowing a peer to retrieve a dropped packet from its corresponding peer. A colored overlay is used with a P³S structure to improve streaming throughput.