Optimal overlay generation for P2P video streaming applications

Video streaming with Peer to Peer (P2P) architecture appears to be an interesting solution for efficient streaming in the heterogeneous scenario of Internet applications. One of the key aspects in a peer-to-peer video broadcast system is to organize the peers into a high quality overlay for disseminating the video stream in order to optimize the bandwidth capacity of the P2P system. This work proposes an innovative approach based on Integer Linear Programming for the optimal network overlay generation, suitable to push-based approaches for data dissemination. Preliminary results show the flexibility of the proposed model to generate an overlay following different constraints or operational requirements. The usability and the computational complexity of the proposed method when the overlay includes an high number of peers is analyzed.