Real-time streaming in the cloud can increase the provider´s profit and the P2P users´ benefit

This paper proposes a methodology to establish a billing model in a streaming service that can achieve high provider´s profit and increased users´ welfare. We relate three types of the service´s topology: P2P (multicast), P2P-Cloud (hybrid) and Cloud (unicast) to different user profiles and analyze their effect on the provider´s cost and profit. The evaluation shows that increased user cooperation, significantly decreases the provider´s cloud infrastructure cost and make his profit highest when 50%-100% of the users cooperate. More cooperation increases the overall users´ welfare in terms of monetary remuneration.