A Measurement Study of

Cache Rejection in P2P

Live Streaming System
Yishuai Chen*, Changjia Chen, Chunxi Li
Network Research Group, Telecom Lab,
Beijing Jiaotong University
http://telcomlab.googlepages.com
Index

 Introduction
 Measurement Result
 Analysis
 Modeling
Limited Cache Size

 Cache: For P2P sharing

 Live service: like TV
 Peers keep forwarding to watch the newest
scene.
 Old content become out-of-date and is not
required by any peers, so it can be discarded by
peers safely
 So the cache size can be limited
 10s-100s
Sliding Window

 Chunks may arrive out of sequence

 not a FIFO
Example
 A new chunk is received
 Assume a fixed size cache

1111111111111…………1111111111
001011011
Get a new
chunk

1111111111111…………1111111111
1111111111111 001011011 0000000000001

Reject the same amount

of chunks

No, We are
downloading!
Rate Changes
 Ideal stable status
 Cache rejection rate = Chunk arriving rate =
Server upload rate
 Rate Change
 8 chunks/s -> 10 chunks/s
 With fixed size chunk, it reflects the change of
encoding rate
 Should sync, but how sync?
 Immediately
 delay
Measurement

 Design our PPLive crawler to actively crawl the

buffer status of media server and peers
 1st May, 2007, 4hr.
 1 PPLive channel
 Media Server
 {head chunk id, end chunk id}
 crawl interval: 10s
 376 Peers:
 {head chunk id, bitmap}
 crawl interval: 5s
Rs vs. Ro(One Peer)

Latency

Tracking
Rate (PLL)
Change
Peers Change Ro at Different
Time

 大多分布在 50s-100s 之间，极个别有 300s 延时

At the Same Chunk!

 变化点比较集中。进一步分析数字特征
Detail, 4 Peers, Rate Change
Point 4
Rs also Change at the Same
Chunk!
 因为 Rs 的取样间隔长，所以最后获得的 Rs
变化曲线比较平缓，通常需要 1.5-2K offset 范
围来完成速率改变
Behavior & Meaning
 Peer’s cache rejection synchronizes with
media server’s chunk upload on chunk
 What’s its underlying meaning?
 Fixed Time Rejection Algorithm
 No matter how chunk rate changes, server always
upload 1s’ content in 1s, peers playback 1s’ content in
1s, therefore, it is natural to reject 1s’ content in 1s
 Inspiration:
 Time is the most important property in P2P Live
streaming system
 It is invariable in the universe
 Indirect, looks good
Modeling
 Virtual Buffer

 Characteristic
 FIFO Buffer
 Input: Media Server
 Output: Peer buffer head
 Fixed duration buffer
Validation
Virtual Buffer Abstract

 The buffer abstract includes the P2P network

 The chunk propagation process in the P2P network can
be modeled with this abstraction
 Sliding windows model
 Key: It is measurable!
 It can be validated in the real world PPLive network
Thanks!
 Numerical Result

Rate change chunk offset:

Interval Mean Min Max Max-Min Std. Dev

1 24200 24193 24206 13 4.93
2 33097 33086 33106 20 7.20
3 53498 53474 53509 35 11.14
4 55377 55372 55382 10 4.84
5 94895 94879 94901 22 7.17
6 104909 104890 104923 33 12.59
 Comparison: Ro and Rs
Change
Change Chunk Offset Difference

Interval Difference
1 3
2 -72
3 -42
4 186
5 56
6 -126
Lack of Explicit Result
 Misc existed system report
 Coolstreaming, Anysee, GridMedia, etc.
 10s-200s
 Measurement:
 PPLive: “adaptively allocated buffer size according to the
streaming rate and the buffering time period specified by
the media source” [X. Hei, C. Liang, J. Liang, Y. Liu and K. W. Ross, “A
Measurement Study of a Large Scale P2P IPTV System”, Nov 2006
 Method: downloading media file from its local streaming
server after physically disconnecting the PC from network.
Found buffer size varied from 7.8 MBytes to 17.1Mbytes
Usage
 Stable sharing for partner peers
 Avoid the abrupt rejection problem
 Adaptively adjusts buffer size according to
the streaming rate
 Smoothly change buffer size when chunk rate
change
Backup

 Y. Zhou, D. M. Chiu, and John C.S Lui, "A Simple

Model for Analyzing P2P Streaming Protocols",
The fifteenth IEEE InternationalConference on
Network Protocols (ICNP 2007), Bei Jing, China,
Oct. 2007

 Our paper: Measure and Model P2P Streaming

System by Buffer Bitmap, To appear in HPCC
2008.
Measurement & Modeling