Adaptive neighbor management for cooperative P2P video-on-demand streaming

P2P content distribution is attractive to offload servers for large scale streaming multicast. The effectiveness of content distribution depends on the willingness of peers to contribute their resources (bandwidth and storage space) for this purpose. Achieving peer cooperation, however, is infeasible without a rational incentive. In particular, P2P Video-on-Demand (VoD) design faces additional challenges for cooperation: (i) designing an effective scheme for cooperation between peers with asymmetric interests, and (ii) guaranteeing streaming quality of service (QoS) under stringent time constraints. In this paper, we present CoVoD, a novel cooperative P2P VoD streaming approach, to tackle these challenges. It achieves cooperation through adaptive neighbor management, based on referrals among peers with asymmetric interests. Experimental results demonstrate that CoVoD improves service quality over alternatives, and strongly penalizes freeriders (peers who do not contribute resources).