Towards efficient video chunk dissemination in peer-to-peer live streaming

There are substantial differences in chunk dissemination manner between P2P live streaming and BitTorrent, and inappropriate algorithms will result in inefficiency of live streaming systems. In this paper, we study the chunk dissemination of P2P live streaming, and introduce a discrete and slotted mathematical model to analyze chunk selection algorithms, including rarest first algorithm and greedy algorithm. Moreover, we present a performance metric to evaluate chunk selection algorithms, as well as the optimization function for the exploration of chunk dissemination strategies. We point out the causes of poor performance of these algorithms, and propose a service request randomization mechanism to promote the use of peer resources, which can prevent chunk requests from rendezvous on a few of peers. Simultaneously, we employ weight assignment strategies to avoid excessive requests for rare chunks. Besides, we present an enhanced model, which adds node degree constraint, to improve our model. We revisit the chunk selection algorithms based on the enhanced model. The results of simulation experiments validate our theoretical analysis and indicate that the weighted randomization mechanism is resilient to flash crowd and peer churn, and can improve the performance of P2P live streaming.