While recent measurement studies have shown the effectiveness of P2P network in media streaming, there have been questions raised about the quality of service (QoS), reliability of streaming services and sub optimal uplink utilization in particular. P2P streaming systems are inherently less reliable because of churn, internet dynamics, node heterogeneity and randomness in the swarm. We present a new model for P2P media streaming based on clustering of peers, called alliances. We show that alliance formation is a loosely coupled and an effective way to organize the peers. We show that our model maps to a ldquosmall-worldrdquo network, which form efficient overlay structures and are robust to network perturbations such as churn. We present a comparative simulation based study of our model with CoolStreaming/DONet and present a quantitative performance evaluation. Simulation results are promising and show that our model scales well under varying workloads and conditions, delivers near optimal levels of QoS, and for most cases, performs at par or even better than CoolStreaming/DONet.

In this paper, we present a swarm based peer to peer media streaming model. In our approach, nodes that serve the maximum content to their peers have a higher utility to the swarm and become candidates for direct relay of stream from the media server. This reward forms a natural incentive for the nodes to contribute to the swarm. Nodes cluster into small groups, called alliances, for a symbiotic association. Alliance members must exchange pieces to have the complete packet. This policy dissuades non-cooperating members in an alliance from their selfish behavior. We study our model using a simulator and present some initial results