P2P streaming with LT codes: A prototype experimentation

Abstract

In this work rateless codes are used as the key content delivery mechanism for the design of a novel P2P live streaming application. Novel algorithms for the management of the peers’ resources and the exploitation of the rateless codes for content delivery in a mesh based overlay are presented. Moreover, the application is optimized for the streaming of scalable video coding. A full prototype has been developed and tested over the Planetlab network showing excellent performance in a world scale deployment. To the best of our knowledge no previous experimentation of a P2P streaming application based on rateless codes has been performed in such an uncontrolled and realistic environment.