Supporting VCR Functions in P2P VoD Services Using Ring-Assisted Overlays

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have been shown to be a promising approach to providing large-scale video-on-demand (VoD) services over the Internet for their potential scalability. However, how to efficiently support VCR functions for VoD services in such networks remains a major challenge. In this paper we propose a novel ring-assisted overlay topology, called RINDY, to address this issue. In RINDY, a peer can implement fast relocation of random seeks by maintaining some near neighbors and remote neighbors in a set of concentric rings with power law radii. We explore several key problems in RINDY including ring organization, neighbor placement over rings and neighbor lookup for random seeks. We evaluate its performance through simulations and compare it with some existing approaches. The experimental results show that RINDY outperforms previous schemes in terms of control overhead, latency and quality of streaming, especially under frequent VCR operations.