P2P Video Distribution

• Download the video, and watch it afterwards (typical BitTorrent behaviour)
• Watch the video while downloading it (Video-on-Demand, Vuze and Joost)
• Watch the video while it is being generated (web-cams, live TV broadcasts, etc)

Our research focusses on combining all these modes of video streaming into a single solution by merging them into the BitTorrent protocol. This allows a single player to download movies, watch video-on-demand, and watch live video streams using one technology, while taking advantage of the popularity and maturity of existing BitTorrent clients.

We have completed our SwarmPlayer software to support these streaming modes, but require an audience to test it on. After all, P2P technology is designed to support thousands of users, and to properly test this, many users have to watch the same video at the same time.

How does it work?

In centralised video streaming systems, such as YouTube, a single set of computers provides the video to all viewers. Such a solution requires a massive number of computers (like YouTube has) to serve all of the videos to a large set of users.

Peer-to-peer technology takes a different approach. The video stream is served to a few users, after which users exch ange and forward the video stream among each other. The users thus help serving the video, reducing or even removing the need for a central server park. Starting a YouTube-like system becomes orders of magnitude cheaper when P2P technology is used. The downside of peer-to-peer is that the quality is harder to control since the responsibility of forwarding the video is shifted from the central server park to the users themselves. If the users cannot or will not forward the video among each other, the quality of the system w ill suffer.

Goal of this trial

The goal of this trial is to examine how well SwarmPlugin scales when serving thousands of users on the Internet. It is not possible to reproduce thousands of users around the globe in a lab, so we have to use a trial. We hope in return for their participation, we can give participants a peak on what the future of online video might look like :).

What's on: BBC R&D TV episode 3

Unfortunately, we cannot show you the latest movies in our tests. For this trial we are using one stream provided by BBC with copyright clearance.

Finding out if it works

To understand the how well streaming work with the SwarmPlugin, we need to know what is going on in the network. For that we are collecting statistics. Also, when the video is finished, we run a couple of experiments: one for a new NAT traversal mechanism, an ISP-friendly congestion control algorithm and a novel UDP-based light P2P swarming core. More about all this in the legal page.

P2P-Next Background

This trial is part of the P2P-Next project. P2P-Next is a European research project funded by the EU FP7 framework. The P2P-Next project aims to build a next-generation P2P content delivery platform, to be designed, developed, and applied jointly by a consortium consisting of high-profile academic and industrial partners with proven track records in innovation and commercial success.

P2P-Next is developing a platform that takes Open Source development, open standards, and future-proof iterative design as key design principles. By using P2P technology we aim to provide an efficient and low-cost delivery platform for professional and user-created content.

More Living Lab trials

This is the second of several trials that the P2P-Next project will conduct in the coming 4 years. Learn more about these trials and voluteer for the next trial.