Multimedia Streaming Using Cloud-Based P2P Systems

Abstract

The past one and a half decades have seen great strides in the field of commercially available distributed computing implementations. The two most popular architectures in the modern world are Peer-to-Peer Systems and Cloud Systems. Peer-to-Peer Systems (P2P) have become very popular in recent times, mainly being used to facilitate file sharing among disparate systems. Another recent trend in modern computing has been the wide scale utilization of Cloud Computing architectures. These systems are used to allow multiple systems to pool their resources and allow other tertiary systems to use these shared resources in bulk for tasks such as data storage, complex calculations, and file sharing. This entails the conceptual outsourcing of various data processing tasks to an external cloud system. Given the two nearly independent functionalities of P2P and Cloud architectures, it is interesting to consider the possibility of fusing these two concepts and researching the applications of the resultant amalgamation. In this research paper, we discuss the theory and application of Cloud Based Peer-to-Peer Systems and their potential application in multimedia streaming services. While the value of P2P Systems and Cloud Computing Systems have been extolled individually, the hybrid of both concepts shows great promise. In this paper we provide an introduction to Cloud Computing Systems, P2P Systems, and the advantages as well as the limitations of both configurations. We then describe the concept of a Cloud-Based P2P System, its basic architecture, and its possible implementations. We also describe the possible application of a Cloud-Based P2P System as a platform for a multimedia streaming service. A proposed algorithm to facilitate streaming in such an application is also described, along with a proposed system model and its advantages. � 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.