1. P2P Live Streaming: Selected Systems Dmitri Moltchanov Tampere University of Technology Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering 1

2. Outline 1.Introduction 2.SopCast 3.PPLive 4.TvAnts 5.TVU networks 6.Experimental Tests 7.Conclusions 2

3. Introduction Lot of open source and proprietary P2P streaming implementations P2P media streaming is pretty new technology and there are no de facto standard(s) Majority of implementations have been created and mostly used in Far East 3

4. Summary of Existing Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Technologies 1/4 4 SoftwareHome pageLiveVoD Abacasthttp://www.abacast.com/XX ACTLab TVhttp://www.actlab.tv/X Afreecahttp://afreeca.com/X AllCasthttp://www.allcast.com/X BitTorrent DNAhttp://www.bittorrent.com/dna/XX CloneCasthttp://clonecast.free.fr/X Coolstreaming Mediacenterhttp://www.coolstreaming.us/hp.php?lang=enX End System Multicasthttp://esm.cs.cmu.edu/X Freecasthttp://www.freecast.org/X Global Media Serviceshttp://globalmediaservices.net/X

5. Summary of Existing Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Technologies 2/4 5 SoftwareHome pageLiveVoD Itivahttp://www.itiva.com/XX Joosthttp://www.joost.com/X MaxTVhttp://www.max-tv.be/?lng=enX Mediazonehttp://www.mediazone.com/index.htmlXX NiFTyTV Online Televisionhttp://www.niftytv.com/XX Nodezillahttp://www.nodezilla.net/X Octoshapehttp://www.octoshape.com/X P2P-Radiohttp://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/X P2PLivehttp://www.p2plive.org/X Pcasthttp://itv.mop.com/X

6. Summary of Existing Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Technologies 3/4 6 SoftwareHome pageLiveVoD PeerCasthttp://www.peercast.org/X Peerstreamhttp://www.peerstream.net/X PPLivehttp://www.pplive.com/XX PPStreamhttp://ppstream.com/X QQLivehttp://live.qq.com/X RawFlowhttp://www.rawflow.com/X ShareCasthttp://www.scast.tv/scast/X SopCasthttp://www.sopcast.com/X Stream-2-Streamhttp://s2s.sourceforge.net/X StreamAudiohttp://www.streamaudio.com/X

7. Summary of Existing Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Technologies 4/4 7 SoftwareHome pageLiveVoD StreamerOnehttp://www.streamerone.com/X Streamer P2P Radiohttp://www.streamerp2p.com/X Swarmcasthttp://www.swarmcast.com/XX Trevbushttp://www.trevbus.org/X Tribler Streaminghttp://tribler.org/trac/X TvAntshttp://www.tvants.com/X TVU networkshttp://www.tvunetworks.com/X Uuseehttp://www.uusee.com/X Vatatahttp://www.vatata.com/en/XX Veohhttp://www.veoh.com/XX Vuzehttp://www.vuze.com/X Zattoohttp://zattoo.com/X

8. 8 SopCast Developed as student project at Fundan University in China Closed source (shows ads while loading stream) Encoding formats Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA) Advanced Systems Format (ASF) RealMedia (RM), RealMedia Variable Bitrate (RMVB) MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) SopCast has three components SopPlayer to view live channels and for own broadcasts WebPlayer plugin for WWW browsers to play SopCast channels embedded in WWW pages (requires the player itself) SopFilter plugin for Windows Media Player to watch SopCast channels directly in Windows Media Player (WMP)

9. SopCast Supported OSs Windows Linux Requires separate media player (WMP, RealPlayer, MPlayer, VLC…) All channels are published by users and only for test purpose Mesh-based overlay Chunk-based stream partitioning Channel server queried to obtain an updated channel list Root servers (trackers) queried to retrieve online peer list after user has selected channel to view 9

10. SopCast Buffering Techniques 10 Two buffers SopCast buffer Media Player Buffer Received chunks are stored in the SopCast buffer When SopCast buffer threshold is exceeded, local Media Player is launched and it retrieves data from the SopCast buffer using local WWW server After the Media player buffer is filled actual playback begins Fallica, B., Yue Lu, Kuipers, F., Kooij, R., Van Mieghem, P., "On the Quality of Experience of SopCast," Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies, 2008. NGMAST '08. The Second International Conference on, vol., no., pp.501-506, 16-19 Sept. 2008

11. The Topology of SopCast Streaming System 11 http://www.sopcast.com/docs/encoder.html

12. SopCast Screenshots 12

13. 13 PPLive Developed at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China Freeware but proprietary Encoding formats WMV ASF? RMVB Supported OS Windows Requires separate media player (WMP or Real Player) Mesh-based overlay Chunk-based stream partitioning

14. 14 PPLive Channel server queried to obtain an updated channel list Root servers (trackers) queried to retrieve online peer list after user has selected channel to view Two buffers like in SopCast X. Hei, C. Liang, J. Liang, Y. Liu, and K.W. Ross, "A Measurement Study of a Large-Scale P2P IPTV System“, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, vol.9, no.8, pp.1672-1687, Dec. 2007

15. PPLive Screenshots 15

16. PPLive Screenshots 16

17. TvAnts Freeware application developed at Zhejiang University in China All the needed features like content search and stream playout are integrated to the TvAnts client Supported OS Windows TvAnts offers specific information about the network statistics Users may for example watch how the buffer is filled and which parts are available Upload and download statistics, and CPU usage of the different software components are also monitored Mesh-based overlay Chunk-based stream partitioning TvAnts is based on a tracker system where content information is gathered from different trackers and listed in the TvAnts client 17

18. TvAnts Screenshots 18

19. TvAnts Screenshots 19

20. TvAnts Screenshots 20

21. TVU networks TVU networks was founded in 2005 and it is headquartered in Mountain View, California with Asia Pacific offices also in Changhai, China TVUPlayer to view live channels 1.Standalone application for Windows and Mac OSX 2.Plugin to play channels embedded in WWW pages 3.TVUPlayer Mobile (Windows Mobile 5, 6 or 6.1) TVUBroadcast to create a live TV channel Windows and Linux Web-based interface TVU account needed to be able to broadcast 21

22. TVU Broadcast Platform 22 At the core of the platform is TVU network's patent-pending Real-time Packet Replication (RPR) technology http://pages.tvunetworks.com/broadcast/how_it_work.html

23. TVU Broadcast Platform 23 http://pages.tvunetworks.com/broadcast/how_it_work.html

24. TVUPlayer Screenshot 24

25. TVUBroadcast Screenshot 25

26. Experimental Tests 1 Selected P2P media streaming systems are analyzed to see how suitable those are for the mobile usage Tested applications SopCast, TvAnts and TVUPlayer Used network connections EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, ADSL and LAN 26

27. Experimental Tests 1: Bootstrap Times Connection SopCastTVAntsTVUPlayer ~ 64 kbps ~350 kbps ~ 600 kbps ~ 100 kbps ~ 350 kbps ~ 600 kbps ~ 100 kbps ~ 350 kbps ~ 600 kbps EDGE59 s 1 - 2 - 2- 2 105 s 1 - 2 UMTS24 s- 2 87 s- 2 47 s- 2 HSDPA14 s65 s74 s59 s71 s87 s37 s51 s58 s ADSL14 s62 s69 s62 s72 s80 s31 s56 s62 s LAN13 s54 s36 s59 s69 s77 s22 s26 s28 s 27 The bootstrap time (initial buffering time) Time from pressing the play button to a good user experience Is dependent on the delay and throughput of the access network 1Sometimes the stream works with this connection and sometimes it does not. It is not recommended to use this connection with this stream. 2Connection is not suitable to be used with this stream.

28. Experimental Tests 1: Stream Buffer Sizes Values were measured by disconnecting from the access network and measuring how long the stream continued to play without noticeable interrupts There might be data in the buffer also after this time period, but, e.g., TvAnts stopped to play the stream when the first discontinuity in the buffer occurred Average stream buffer sizes TVUPlayer ~45s TvAnts ~45s SopCast ~47s After the initial buffering is performed, delay and jitter in the access network do not have much effect to the user experience Big buffer size will smooth the variation between packet arrival times 28

29. Experimental Tests 2 Different aspects of the operation and network impact of selected P2P media streaming systems are analyzed Tested applications SopCast, TvAnts and TVUPlayer Two channels from each application (one sports and one news/documentary channel) were selected and studied for 2 days in a traditional residential environment with an Internet access that is shared by all residents “We do not include PPLive in this study due to its very limited usage in Europe, which can be explained by the fact that most of its channels are blocked to IP addresses of European and American clients due to transmission rights.” 29

30. Experimental Tests 2 30

31. Experimental Tests 2 31

32. Experimental Tests 3 Tested application PPLive 1.One PC for active peer list crawling 2.Four PCs for passive sniffing Two PCs connected to Polytechnic University campus network with 100 Mbps Ethernet access Two PCs connected to residential networks through cable modem located at Manhattan and Brooklyn “The number of simultaneous users watching a PPLive broadcast of the annual spring festival gala show on Chinese New Year Eve on January 28, 2006. We observed that PPLive broadcasted this event to over 200 000 users at the bit rate in the 400-800 kbps range, corresponding to an aggregate bit rate in the vicinity of 100 gigabits/s.” “Based on our measurement results during Feb. 5-12, 2007, PPLive provides 320+ channels with 2600000+ daily users on average. A popular channel may attract 55000+ users daily with the peak of 15000+ concurrent users.” 32

33. Experimental Tests 3: Passive Sniffing 33

34. Experimental Tests 3: Peer List Crawling 34

35. Conclusions Mesh-based overlay seems to be most popular BitTorrent-like chunk-based partitioning is quite often used in the media delivery However, partitioning based on fixed byte ranges is not the best solution for streaming a continuous media, which is of variable bit rate nature Standardization work started in Peer-to-Peer Streaming Protocol (PPSP) IETF working group Signalling and control protocol between trackers and peers to handle the initial and periodic exchange of meta information between trackers and peers Signalling and control protocol for communication among the peers to control the advertising and exchange of media data availability between the peers 35