A Lifetime-Based Peer Selection Mechanism for Peer-to-Peer Video-on-Demand Systems

In this paper, we propose a peer selection mechanism for peer-to-peer video-on-demand (P2P-VoD) systems. The goal of our mechanism is to increase the availability of chunks between a peer and its partners. For this purpose, the process of selecting partners is based on the lifetime of peers, which is time since the beginning of the video playback. Thus, a peer selects as partners other peers with close lifetimes to increase the probability of finding chunks of interest in these selected partners. Results show that the proposed mechanism is efficient for different interactivity patterns. With the proposed mechanism, more than 97% of the video chunks required by a peer are available on its selected partners. This result is achieved even considering that only 10% of the video chunks can be cached by partners. In opposition, the conventional random selection mechanism requires much more disk space, which corresponds to a cache size of at least 70% of chunks, to provide the same level of availability.