Probabilistic Packet Scheduling Scheme for Hybrid Pull-Push P2P Live Streaming Protocols

Hybrid pull-push P2P live streaming protocols are proposed to reduce the delay and the overhead of mesh based protocols and to improve the robustness of tree based protocols. In conventional hybrid protocols such as Cool streaming, the partition of a given stream into several sub streams is conducted in a static manner and each peer selects its parents without considering their upload availability. In this paper, we propose a new packet scheduling scheme for hybrid protocols based on the notion of randomization. Our scheme attaches a pseudo random number to each packet, and associates a sub range of random numbers to each parent and-child pair so that a packet attached a random number will be forwarded through a link associated with a sub range containing the random number. The size of each sub range is determined by considering the upload availability of each parent. By taking such a dynamic, probabilistic approach, we could improve the efficiency of resource utilization, as well as the stability, flexibility, and the robustness against peer churns.