A Hybrid-Mesh Application Layer Multicast based on sub-streams scheduling

Given the strengths and shortcomings of both structured and unstructured overlay, Hybrid-Mesh Application Layer Multicast (HM-ALM) has been proposed as a trade-off for media streaming over the Internet. In HM-ALM, all peers first organize an auxiliary unstructured mesh, and then some ‘good’ peers are identified to construct a backbone structured mesh. The great advantage of HM-ALM is that it has more resilient to end-hosts dynamics than structured approach and offers a better tradeoff between control overhead and delay performance than unstructured approach. However, this hybrid design brings about new issues such as sub-streams collaborating between the backbone and auxiliary, as well as push-pull switching, where we propose sub-streams scheduling algorithm, network coding based link selection and corresponding buffer design to address these issues. Experimental results obtained via network simulation, comparing with representative protocol, demonstrate that our hybrid solution boosts the multicasting quality and also effectively reduces the control overhead.