Phase synchronization and seamless peer-reconnection on peer-to-peer streaming systems

Abstract

To reduce perceived impact, we argue that, in P2P streaming networks, selection of new parent peer for a peer should consider not only network quality (e.g. delay and bandwidth) but also the frame-buffer status between the parent-child peers. When there is large mismatch on the frame-buffer, the child peer is in danger of suffering frame-buffer underflow while playback. Meanwhile, another issue discussed in this paper is phase-skew among peers. Degrees of phase-skew between two peers mean the degrees of presentation-time difference between the two peers. Without proper control, phase-skew could be serious between peers. In this paper we propose an effective buffer management and coordination scheme to avoid these two problems. A prototype P2P streaming system basing on open standards was built to verify our design approaches.