How Scalable Could P2P Live Media Streaming System Be with the Stringent Time Constraint?

The peer-to-peer (P2P) live video streaming system has been demonstrated to have great potential in the public Internet; the large-scale deployment of such systems, however, critically relies on how effective they can deal with the high dynamics encountered, in particular during flash crowd. The rationale behind is that the scaling in P2P live video streaming systems is heavily determined by the timing requirement that streaming applications demand. In this paper, we present an analytical and experimental study on the inherent relationship between the time constraint and the system scale. We develop a generic model for P2P live video streaming that focuses on the peer joining process during flash crowd. We first illustrate that the simple notion of "demand vs. supply" model is insufficient in describing the system scale. By computing the peer start-up time distribution, we demonstrate that the scale is affected by several key factors, especially the peer uploading capacity and the initial system size. We further show the scale is essentially bounded by the timing requirement and the system\´s capability to accommodate flash crowd is subject to a maximum limit.