Shadow VoD: Performance Evaluation as a Capability in Production P2P-CDN Hybrid VoD Networks

Video-on-Demand (VoD) services have achieved great success recently. Most such streaming systems are P2P-CDNhybrid systems. To ensure reliable performance, the most efficient way is to subject those VoD streaming networks to large-scale, realistic performance evaluations. Our previous Shadow Stream system is a production Internet live streaming network with performance evaluation as a built-in capability. In this paper, we extend the same idea into the VoD services. There exists significant difference between live and VoD, hence Shadow Stream cannot be directly used in VoD context. Firstly, clients in P2PVoD service are not synchronized in viewing progress, secondly, in VoD there exists interactive operations (e.g., Pause and drag), thirdly, the different play points of users also bring difficulty to replacing departed real clients. In this paper, we solve all above mentioned challenges. We implement Shadow VoD and demonstrate its benefits through extensive evaluations.