Review: Cooperative Networking

V. N. Padmanabhan, H. J. Wang, P. A. Chou, and K. Sripanidkulchai, "Distributing Streaming Media Content Using Cooperative Networking," ACM NOSSDAV, May 2002.

There are two types of content distribution: (a) infrastructure based where the traditional client-server mechanism is followed. (b) P2P-based where there is not central server, just the originator. This paper introduces cooperative networking or CoopNet which combines the idea of these two content distribution mechanism. The originator of the content provides a center point which is contact for receiving the content. It keeps track of the peers downloading the content and when it is overloaded, it hands over some of the distribution work to the peers that have already connected or received the content.

CoopNet considers two types of streaming media content distribution: real time streaming and on-demand delivery of recorded media. For real-time streaming it constructs distribution trees made up of the participating peers so that not all the peers are connected to the central server. The central server is contacted only to find the join point. CoopNet implements multiple description coding (MDC) to split the stream for multiple distribution trees. The distribution trees are constructed based on the location of the peers and third party locationing service is used for this purpose. On-demand delivery is relatively less complicated and works much similar to the normal P2P file sharing. This research proposes of using distributed delivery using MDC.