Raptor Codes for P2P Streaming

In this paper, we present a first analysis of the application of Raptor codes in the domain of P2P streaming. With the help of fountain codes, such as Raptor codes, it is possible to completely omit content reconciliation in P2P networks. Hereby, the scheduling complexity of the data dissemination is greatly reduced. The contributions of the paper are the following: First, we present our implementation of the Raptor code used in the performed experiments and elaborate the application of the Raptor code in the scenario of P2P streaming. Second, we investigate the choice of the prevalent parameters, necessary to achieve the best trade-off between performance, computational complexity and resilience of the Raptor code. We use the obtained results to evaluate the general feasibility of using Raptor codes to improve the performance of P2P streaming networks. In addition, we report some insights arising from the practical experience with Raptor codes.