ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the design and implementation of a two-tier proxy-based peer to peer (P2P) live streaming network, which consists of a low-delay high-bandwidth proxy backbone and a peer-level network leveraging intra prediction (IP) multicast capability. In P2P streaming, contents are distributed among end hosts mainly using the upload bandwidth of the peers, while content servers only deliver streams to a small number of the peers. The goal of FastMesh is to design an overlay network that is suitable for efficient proxy-level communications. Compared to other proxy-P2P networks, FastMesh and Scalable island multicast are specially designed and optimized given the special characteristics of the proxy and peer networks. Proxy-P2P has better resilience against peer churn and flash crowd, that is, a drastic increase of users at the beginning of a popular program. Peers belonging to the same IP-multicast network form a multicast island to achieve better bandwidth experience and robustness.
