IPTV System Design: An ISP's Perspective

Abstract

IPTV is an emerging Internet application, and is revolutionizing the entertainment and media industries. In this paper, we examine the current progress in research and development of IPTV systems. We provide an overview of two major IPTV system architectures, namely, the IP multicast architecture and the P2P architecture, and review various challenges, design issues, and interesting research problems in these approaches, more from an ISP's perspective. We also outline a hybrid IP multicast and P2P IPTV architecture, which enhances the system resilience to network errors, while preserving the desirable properties of the IP multicast system.