Empirical analysis of multi-sender segment transmission algorithms in peer-to-peer streaming

We study and analyze segment transmission scheduling algorithms in swarm-based peer-to-peer streaming systems. These scheduling algorithms are responsible for coordinating the streaming of video data from multiple senders to a receiver in each streaming session and they have not been rigorously analyzed in the literature. We first conduct an extensive experimental study to evaluate various scheduling algorithms on many PlanetLab nodes distributed all over the world. We study three important performance metrics: continuity index which captures the smoothness of the video playback, load balancing index which indicates how the load is spread across sending peers, and buffering delay required to ensure continuous playback. Then, we propose a new scheduling algorithm called On-time Delivery of VBR (Variable Bit Rate) streams. Our experiments show that the proposed scheduling algorithm improves the playback quality by increasing the continuity index, requires smaller buffering delays, and achieves more balanced load distribution across peers.