will fulfill during its tenure as a supplying peer. To reflect fairness, the higher the amount in (1), the smaller
the amount in (2) - a quantitative definition will be given in Sections 3 and 4.
With the creation of supplying peers, the CDN server can divide the streaming load between itself and the
supplying peers. This is the stage when the CDN and P2P based streaming co-exist; and the P2P streaming
capacity grows (stage I in Figure 2). When a streaming request arrives for a given media file, the CDN
server first checks if there is a set of active supplying peers for this media file such that: (1) They are not
currently serving another streaming session and (2) The sum of their out-bound streaming rate is no less than
the media playback rate. If so, the request will be served by the set of supplying peers selected; otherwise,
the request will be served by the CDN server itself. If both CDN and P2P do not have enough streaming
capacity, the request will be rejected.
Finally, when the P2P streaming capacity for the media file becomes large enough, CDN-based streaming
will no longer be provided, so that the CDN server capacity reserved for this media file can be released.
The handoff time k
0
is determined such that the P2P streaming capacity alone is sufficient to handle all
subsequent streaming requests, with a zero expected rejection rate. After the handoff, the CDN server only
acts as a directory server of this file, and the streaming will be performed by the supplying peers (stage
II in Figure 2). In the case where the peer contribution is in the form of service time (rather than number
of sessions), there may be a stage III (not shown in Figure 2) during which the CDN server will re-join
the media distribution process, using a marginal capacity, to pick up the few “tail” streaming requests that
cannot be accommodated by the P2P streaming capacity.
As to be shown in Section 3, a non-trivial analysis is needed to determine the handoff time k
0
. If the
handoff takes place too early, the P2P streaming capacity may not have grown to the sufficient level. On
the other hand, if the handoff happens too late, the CDN server capacity reserved for the media file will
be held longer thus incurring higher cost. Furthermore, our analysis of k
0
will create a foundation for the
modeling of a more complex media distribution scenario: The content provider releases new media files on
a continuous basis. Operations of the hybrid architecture will then be decomposed into cycles with each
cycle starting at the release of a new media file. Due to the limited CDN server and P2P streaming capacity,
the release of new media files needs to be controlled, so that the system can absorb the peak demand for
one media file before the release of a new one. The analysis of k
0
will help determining the inter-release
duration for more efficient utilization of CDN and P2P capacity. In this paper, we will focus on an in-depth
study of a single cycle, namely the distribution process of one media file.
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