P2P Video Distribution

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has proven to be an effective way to distribute a video among many users. This can be done in three ways:

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.

What's on: BBC and Fabchannel

Of course, we cannot show you the latest movies in our tests. We have obtained two test streams with copyright clearance. The first is a pre-recorded BBC broadcast to test the Video-on-Demand capabilities. The second stream is a live view of Amsterdam from the roof of Fabchannel, which is located here. To see how many people are watching the live video stream, check out our statistics page which keeps track of some basic statistics.

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 exchange 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 will suffer.

Quality

Because of the experimental nature of this setup, we cannot actually guarantee that you'll see the video at the highest quality. In the worst case, you may not see anything at all. For example, other users may not have enough bandwidth available to serve you with the video stream at full speed, or other users may be unreachable because they are firewalled. In fact, one of the goals of this experiment is to measure the impact of those factors on the performance.

Bug reporting

Oops, something went wrong.
You are likely reading this section because there was a problem with the SwarmPlayer.
We are very sorry that this is inconveniencing you, but we would also like to ask you
to provide some details about the issue This information can help us fix the problem and save other people from experiencing the same inconvenience.

The easiest way to report the problem is on our [issue tracker]. If you are experiencing something that could be a software bug you can help us even better by attaching the swarmplayer.log file from [path to log file].

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

Information gathering and privacy

This web server software generates logfiles of the IP addresses of computers that access this web site and of what files they downloaded. These web server logs and survey results may be retained for the duration of the research project. This trial will not record personal data, psychological information, nor other sensitive data. No Person-identifiable data such as names, addresses or contact details are recorded.

The Swarmplayer software generates statistics and submits them to this web site every few minutes when you participate in our trial. The following data will be recorded and analyzed: trial-user demographics, Internet connectivity, bandwidth availability, performance of the video streaming connection including: packet delays, frame rate deadline misses, NAT type, Bittorrent-like unchokes, Bittorrent piece rarity, and other low level P2P networking matters. We will collect and store Internet IPv4 addresses of trial members and keep them under strict confidentiality. At no point will we make this information available to anyone. These Internet IPv4 addresses will be replaced by non-tracable unique identifiers as soon as possible during analysis of trial results.

We reserve the right in the interest of scientific progress and advancement of Open Source P2P software to make aggregated P2P performance statistics and anonymised records available from these trials to the public. We will never publish any personally identifiable information in any form or function.

Legal Disclaimer

There is no warranty for the program, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program ?as is? without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.

Limitation of Liability

In no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who modifies and/or conveys the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered in accurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.