We present a system for video-on-demand streaming in peer-to-peer environment. We start by realizing the major differences between two types of streaming: live and on-demand. These observations lead to a set of problems that need to be solved for a peer-to-peer video-on-demand system. To address these problems, we propose a solution, which includes detail algorithms for building and maintaining an application multicast tree. The novel ideas in this paper are the use of a new caching scheme at clients, and the introduction of generation for better client management. Performance study based on simulation is carried out. The results show that our system outperforms a recently proposed system in a number of important performance metrics.

Deployment of a large-scale multimedia streaming application requires an enormous amount of server and network resources. The simplest delivery technique allocates server resources for each specific request. This technique is very expensive and is not scalable to support a very large user community such as the Internet. Hence, the past decade has witnessed tremendous research efforts to facilitate cost-effective, large-scale deployment of multimedia streaming applications. In this paper, we describe three complementary research approaches: server transmission schemes using multicast, streaming strategies with application layer multicast, and proxy caching techniques. We discuss pros and cons of these technologies and provide our observations on current business solutions.

Video-cassette-recorder-like (VCR) capabilities such as jumping to a specific frame or fast forwarding a video are becoming essential services in video-on-demand (VOD) applications. To provide VCR functionalities in a broadcast environment, current techniques depend on data prefetching. However, a fast-forward or a fast-backward of a video for several seconds would certainly exhaust the prefetch buffer because the prefetching rate cannot sustain typical speeds. In this paper we address this practical problem where each video and its interactive version are broadcast repeatedly on the network. For example, interactive versions might contain only every fifth frame in the original videos. We propose a new technique that leverages these "interactive" broadcasts to provide better VCR service.

Despite the amelioration in communication technologies, the server network I/O bottleneck remains a severe obstacle in video-on-demand applications. All bandwidth-sharing techniques, proposed to overcome this, assume videos to be requested in their entirety. In this paper, we extend the video-on-demand delivery problem so that it allows users to request parts of video and be able to receive them at that instant. Specifically, we propose an efficient technique called multicast jumping (MJ) that provides many desirable properties such as: (1) the demand on the server bandwidth is significantly alleviated; (2) true and scaleable video on demand is achieved; (3) not only for streaming video segments on demand, but the technique also works for on-demand videos in their entirety.

In video-on-demand (VOD) applications, it is desirable to provide the user with the video-cassette-recorder-like (VCR) capabilities such as fast-forwarding a video or jumping to a specific frame. We address this issue in the broadcast framework, where each video is broadcast repeatedly on the network. Existing techniques rely on data prefetching as the mechanism to provide this functionality. This approach provides limited usability since the prefetching rate cannot keep up with typical fast-forward speeds. Fast-forwarding a video for several seconds would inevitably exhaust the prefetch buffer. We address this practical problem in this paper by repeatedly broadcasting the interactive versions of the videos. For instance, an interactive version might contain only every fifth frame in the original video. Our client software leverages these "interactive" broadcasts to provide better VCR service. We formally prove the correctness of this approach, and compare its performance to a prefetch method, called active buffer management. This scheme has been shown to offer, in the broadcast environment, the best performance to date. Our simulation results indicate that the new technique is superior in handling long-duration VCR actions.