Layered Video Quality Incentive Mechanism for Peer-to-Peer Video Streaming

Abstract

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) has attracted attention as an alternative way to enable streaming videos on the Internet. Although P2P systems depend on bandwidth contribution from peers, peers are likely to refuse to contribute their bandwidth. In this paper, we proposed a P2P streaming system that encourages peers to contribute their upstream bandwidth by maintaining fairness among peers and providing different video quality between cooperative peers and selfish peers with a manageable way. Our proposed system determines if peers are cooperative or selfish by a rating mechanism based on their contributed upstream bandwidth, and offers a high quality video to cooperative peers as an incentive. Also we propose a tree reconstruction algorithm to make the system work effectively. Through simulation, we show that the tree reconstruction algorithm works effectively, and our incentive mechanism allocates more downstream bandwidth to cooperative peers and punished selfish peers with low quality video.