Enabling adaptive bitrate algorithms in hybrid CDN/P2P networks

Abstract

As video traffic becomes the dominant part of the global Internet traffic, keeping a good quality of experience (QoE) becomes more challenging. To improve QoE, HTTP adaptive streaming with various adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms has been massively deployed for video delivery. Based on their required input information, these algorithms can be classified, into buffer-based, throughput-based or hybrid buffer-throughput algorithms. Nowadays, due to their low cost and high scalability, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have become an efficient alternative for video delivery over the Internet, and many attempts at merging HTTP adaptive streaming and P2P networks have surfaced. However, the impact of merging these two approaches is still not clear enough, and interestingly, the existing HTTP adaptive streaming algorithms lack testing in a P2P environment. In this paper, we address and analyze the main problems raised by the use of the existing HTTP adaptive streaming algorithms in the context of P2P networks. We propose two methodologies to make these algorithms more efficient in P2P networks regardless of the ABR algorithm used, one favoring overall QoE and one favoring P2P efficiency. Additionally, we propose two new metrics to quantify the P2P efficiency for ABR delivery over P2P.