Flexible Layered Authentication Graph for Multimedia Streaming

In this paper, a new flexible layered authentication graph (FLAG) algorithm is proposed for multimedia streaming authentication. While maximizing the verification probability by avoiding authentication path overlapping, this algorithm allows flexible communication overhead in terms of the number of hash links, as well as flexible authentication group size. These flexibilities make FLAG an excellent candidate for multimedia streaming authentication, in that (i) in the sender buffering mode, it allows elastic sending delay required by multimedia streaming congestion control; (ii) in the receiver buffering mode, it facilitates adaptation to effective network bandwidth; (iii) it also has the potential to provide unequal authentication protection (UAP), which is a natural solution for multimedia code stream. Our analysis and experiment results further confirm the validity of our algorithm.