Peer-to-peer streaming for networked consumer electronics [Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Streaming]

Applications such as multimedia communications and entertainment make media streaming a key feature for peer-to-peer (P2P) technology embedded in networked consumer electronics. In this article, we discuss some key issues that are relevant to enabling peer-to-peer streaming in networked consumer electronics and address possible technical solutions to the issues of interoperability, NAT/firewall traversal, and codec inflexibility. We also address how to improve overall system performance by introducing a notion of node coordinates into the discovery of services on a P2P network and confirm the effectiveness of our approach using simulation. We conclude with a discussion of our prototype CE-oriented P2P streaming system.