Su-peercast: A P2P live streaming system with super-node based on PeerCast

The amount of client a live streaming system can serve by unicast is limited by the bandwidth requirement. Theoretically, IP-multicast is an efficient solution for that situation, but it suffers from poor deployment. Therefore, another solution, called Application Layer Multicast (ALM), is being increasingly recognized as a available alternative. However, this solution also has certain shortcomings. In this paper, we firstly introduce a live streaming system—PeerCast based on application layer multicast, and besides that we indicate its existing problems under practical deployment in the large-scale network. Secondly, in order to improve the PeerCast system performance, we append a Super-Node layer, which can divide the live system into different domains, and re-design the play process and heartbeat detection mechanism for our new live system. Finally, the re-designed system performance evaluation is presented.