Using digital fountains in future IPTV streaming platforms: a future perspective

Coding techniques are progressively succeeding in finding a beneficial use throughout all the components of advanced multimedia streaming networks, including peer-to-peer (P2P) content distribution strategies. In fact, although P2P algorithms are regarded as an important technology that will be part of future commercial Internet protocol television (IPTV) platforms, it has been shown that their ability to efficiently distribute multimedia streams within strict time constraints, and their robustness to high churn rates, can still improve when putting to good use source and network coding algorithms. For this reason, in the past few years a wealth of research has been undertaken aiming at jointly optimizing both coding and streaming schemes. In this article, we analyze the progress made by the latest scientific research in the field of jointly using coding and P2P streaming strategies, and we offer a set of experimental results performed on a real planet-wide P2P streaming test-bed, using Digital Fountains (DFs). Surprisingly, our testbed study reveals that utilizing DF techniques is not always beneficial to the distribution of streaming data using a P2P distribution strategy. In fact, our results show that only when the network scales beyond a certain size, it is possible to appreciate the advantages introduced by the use of DFs, showing that coding techniques should always be carefully deployed and their advantages well understood. For this reason, we believe this work can provide a useful aid in better appreciating the critical aspects of jointly utilizing multimedia streaming and DF coding techniques for IPTV.