Home // International Journal On Advances in Networks and Services, volume 3, numbers 3 and 4, 2010 // View article


A Further Look at the Distance-Availability Weighted Piece Selection Method: A BitTorrent Piece Selection Method for On-Demand Media Streaming

Authors:
Petter Sandvik
Mats Neovius

Keywords: media, on-demand, peer-to-peer, streaming, BitTorrent, simulation

Abstract:
During the last few years, BitTorrent has become a popular way of transferring large files over the Internet. However, the original out-of-order nature of the BitTorrent protocol has made it difficult to enable playback of media files that have not yet been fully transferred. In this paper we describe a piece selection method which we believe will enable simultaneous playback of the transferred media file without impacting on the speed and quality of the transfer. The distance-availability weighted method compromises between selecting rare pieces and pieces which are soon to be played back, making playback possible before the transfer is complete. In our simulations, we have compared our piece selection method with other proposals for on-demand streaming media using a BitTorrent-like setup, with our method giving similar or better results.

Pages: 473 to 483

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2010. Used with permission.

Publication date: April 6, 2011

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2644