Virtual Direction Multicast for Overlay Networks

In this paper we propose Virtual Direction Multicast (VDM) which aims to minimize network usage and disconnection time for video multicast applications on peer-to-peer overlay networks. It locates the end hosts relative to each other based on a virtualized orientation scheme. It builds multicast tree by connecting the nodes which are estimated to be in the same virtual direction. By using the concept of directionality, we target to use minimal resources in the underlying network. We compare VDM against a Closest Node Multicast (CNM) protocol that connects nearby nodes to construct the multicast tree. Simulation results show that our proposed technique VDM consistently outperforms CNM under different churn rates.

I. Introduction

With the improvement of bandwidth and expansion of Internet usage, content providers are aiming to deliver multimedia content over the Internet. Live video streaming applications have become highly popular both as backbone (e.g. IPTV [1]–[3]) and overlay (e.g. P2PTV [4], [5]) distribution applications. High demand for such applications which constitute a large amount of today's Internet traffic increases server load and network bandwidth consumption. This recent trend in moving video distribution on to the Internet is calling for mechanisms to efficiently and scalably transfer video content to many receivers from a single source. Such content delivery to many receivers is desired to be seamless to the multi-provider operation of the Internet and capable of handling a lot of churn from the network as well as the receiver population.