FLaCoSt: A Novel Peer to Peer Architecture for Video Streaming in a Next Generation Network

This paper proposes a peer-to-peer video streaming delivery system within the framework of Next Generation Networks using Application Level Multicast. Increased efficiency and reliability is achieved in two ways. First, the system uses path diversity by splitting the video traffic in several stripes and distributing each stripe via different multicast trees. Second, the proposed architecture lies within a Next Generation Network framework that enables network resource reservations with different classes of service. Therefore, the video stripes can receive different priorities making possible the usage of Layered Coding techniques such as Multi-Description Coding and Scalable Video Coding. The peer-to-peer protocol takes advantage of the multipath delivery and resources reservation by optimising the searches for a parent in the multicast tree, thus minimising the service access time and service interruptions. These ideas can be improved using always-on central devices like Residential Gateways as peer nodes.