Peer-Assisted Video Streaming With RTMFP Flash Player: A Measurement Study on PPTV

Real-time media flow protocol (RTMFP) is a protocol developed by Adobe for multimedia delivery under both client-server and peer-to-peer (P2P) paradigms. Currently, major Internet video service providers, such as PPTV and iQIYI, have already built their Web-based video streaming systems with RTMFP. In such a system, a user only needs to install a Flash Player plug-in on his Web browser, and can stream videos in a peer-assisted way. Despite its wide usage, RTMFP has received little attention from the measurement community. In this paper, we select PPTV as an example and study the RTMFP video streaming technology with a measurement approach. We reveal the architecture of PPTV's RTMFP streaming system and show that, compared with proprietary P2P networks, the RTMFP network has a different content distribution policy, and exhibits different features on peers' streaming behaviors, potential system bottleneck, and network dynamics. We also study RTMFP's video transmission and find that the protocol's selective retransmission scheme can effectively overcome packet losses and improve the video playback quality; however, the TCP-like congestion control mechanism of RTMFP does not lead to fairness between RTMFP and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) traffics, due to the mismatch between the inherited pull-based video segment distribution model of the P2P streaming application and the protocol's built-in congestion control mechanism. This paper provides insights into the RTMFP-based video streaming technology and is helpful for people to construct better peer-assisted video systems with RTMFP.