MeTree: A Contribution and Locality-Aware P2P Live Streaming Architecture

The popularization of broadband access and Internet enables Live p2p streaming services. Live p2p streaming not only enriches the approaches and media of broadcasting but also frees the restriction on content providers as any user is able to be a content provider. The high scalability of p2p architecture significantly eases the burden of streaming server and bandwidth. This paper proposes a hybrid live p2p streaming system. A mesh in tree structure, denoted as MeTree, is suggested. Metree considers both the physical topology and peers´ contributions to build the overlay structure. According each peer´s contribution and location, Metree groups peers into different groups to provide differentiated services and reduce delay. Simulation results demonstrate that Metree significantly improve users´ QoE and system performance while end-to-end delay, server loading, and network bandwidth are reduced.