We aim to enable a large-scale, high-volume, peer-to-peer, stored-video streaming service over the Internet, such as on-line DVD rentals. This paper addresses the following three technical challenges associated with the distribution of streaming video over the P2P network: 1) allow users with limited transmit bandwidth capacity to become contributing sources, 2) support the advertisement and discovery of time-changing and time-bounded video frame availability, and 3) design the architecture of a streaming network that enables above two functionalities.

To meet these requirements, we propose a video distribution network model based on the hybrid architecture between client-server and P2P. In this model, a video is divided into a sequence of small segments and each user retrieves the video segments according to the scheduling algorithm which determines the order, the timing, and the rate of segment retrievals from other users. The model also employs an advertisement and discovery scheme which incorporates parameters of the scheduling algorithm to allow users to share their life-time of video segment availability information in one advertisement and one query.

The simulation study shows that the proposed model and associated schemes greatly alleviate the bandwidth requirement of the video distribution server, especially when the number of participating users grows large. As much as 90% of load reduction was observed in some experiments when compared to the traditional client-server based video distribution service.