Hive.js: Browser-Based Distributed Caching for Adaptive Video Streaming

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has long been considered a natural complement to standard CDN infrastructure for video distribution since it greatly reduces costs and improves quality of user experience. However, P2P solutions have traditionally required the installation of additional software or plugins to be deployed, which significantly hinders adoption. In this paper, we present Hive.js, a browser-based plugin-less distributed caching platform for video streaming. Hive.js is layered over WebRTC, a new set of HTML5 APIs for direct browser-to-browser communication, and it is designed to transport adaptive HTTP streaming protocols, specifically MPEG-DASH. Initial results obtained by evaluating Hive.js in a controlled test environment show that our approach significantly reduces the load on CDN infrastructure and does not sacrifice quality of user experience.