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 (P2P) streaming systems. These scheduling algorithms are responsible for coordinating the streaming of video data from multiple senders to a receiver in each streaming session. Although scheduling algorithms directly impact the user-perceived visual quality in streaming sessions, they have not been rigorously analyzed in the literature. In this paper, 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: (i) continuity index which captures the smoothness of the video playback, (ii) load balancing index which indicates how the load is spread across sending peers, and (iii) buffering delay required to ensure continuous playback. Our experimental analysis reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each scheduling algorithm, and provides insights for developing better ones in order to improve the overall performance of P2P streaming systems. Then, we propose a new scheduling algorithm called on-time delivery of VBR streams (ODV). 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.