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WuKong: a practical video streaming service based on native BitTorrent and scalable video coding

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Abstract

Many researches on peer-to-peer video streaming have focused on dealing with highly dynamic, high-churn P2P environment. Most of P2P streaming protocols were modified from a P2P file sharing protocol. Inspired by the high performance on peer-to-peer file sharing of BitTorrent, we propose an overlaying streaming mechanism on the native BitTorrent protocol and realize a practical P2P video streaming service, called WuKong. WuKong not only takes advantages of BitTorrent but also combines the video scalability of layered video coding. In this paper, we depict an overlaid streaming mechanism in WuKong and an adaptive layer-downloading process to balance between the video quality and bandwidth utilization on heterogeneous peers. WuKong is carried out by using an open-sourced library of the BitTorrent protocol, coding schemes of the Windows Media Video (WMV), and the Scalable Video Coding (SVC). We measured and compared the service quality of end-users served by WuKong on heterogeneous peers. In addition, we evaluated the effectiveness of WuKong with peers that are randomly joining and leaving the P2P network. The results show that WuKong not only provides high quality P2P video streaming services but also supports different scaling abilities over heterogeneous devices.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Jung-Yang Kao and Jih-Sheng Tu for their help on the SVC processing of the WuKong system. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have improved the presentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Sec.2, KuangFu Rd., Hsinchu, Taiwan, 300, Republic of China

    Pin-Chuan Liu, Tien-Ho Chen & Wei-Kuan Shih

  2. Industrial Technology Research Institute, 195, Sec.4, ChungHsing Rd., Chutung, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 310, Republic of China

    Pin-Chuan Liu & Tsung-Chieh Lee

  3. Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec.4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, Taiwan, 106, Republic of China

    Jenq-Shiou Leu & Yun-Sun Yee

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  1. Pin-Chuan Liu
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  2. Jenq-Shiou Leu
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  3. Tsung-Chieh Lee
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  4. Tien-Ho Chen
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  5. Yun-Sun Yee
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  6. Wei-Kuan Shih
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Correspondence to Jenq-Shiou Leu.

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Liu, PC., Leu, JS., Lee, TC. et al. WuKong: a practical video streaming service based on native BitTorrent and scalable video coding. Multimed Tools Appl 60, 47–68 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-011-0793-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-011-0793-2

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