REALTIME MEDIA DISTRIBUTION IN A P2P NETWORK

Nodes in a realtime p2p media distribution can act in the role of ‘Amplifiers’ to increase the total available bandwidth in the network and thus to improve the quality of the realtime media consumed by the viewers. Examples of such media consumptions are TV channels over the Internet, video on demand films, and files, and media files downloaded to be consumed at a later time. Amplifiers are added to the p2p swarm by a mechanism that discovers the need for supplemental bandwidth in the swarm and orders nodes to join the swarm in the role of amplifiers. The amplifiers' main goal is to maximize the amount of bandwidth they supply (upload) to the swarm while minimizing the amount of bandwidth they consume (download).