Streaming media over a color overlay based on forward error correction technique

The number of clients that receive high-quality streaming video from a source is greatly limited by the application requirements, such as the high bandwidth and reliability. In this work, a method was developed to construct a color overlay, which enables clients to receive data across multiple paths, based on the forward error correction technique. The color overlay enlarges system capacity by reducing the bottlenecks and extending the bandwidth, improves reliability against node failure, and is more resilient to fluctuations of network metrics. A light-weight protocol for building the overlay is also presented. Extensive simulations were conducted and the results clearly support the claimed advantages.