Media handling for multiparty sessions in ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks: a novel distributed approach

In this paper we propose a new architecture for media handling in ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks. The architecture is distributed with two steps in the mixing operation. Our system is composed of two levels of peers. The high level is formed by peers, which do mixing and are called mixers. Each mixer is dedicated to a number of peers belonging to the second level. Synchronization of mixers is important to deliver media streams with proper ordering and timing. We propose a distributed algorithm based on logical clocks to synchronize mixers. The two main advantages of our architecture are scalability and the limited number of mixers in end-to-end path. This second feature guarantees rapid delivery of streams. We have built a proof of concept prototype and compared the performance results with the hierarchical mixing architecture.