Impacts of Peer Characteristics on P2PTV Networks Scalability

A P2PTV system allows users to watch live video streams redistributed by other users via a Peer-To-Peer (P2P) network. In an ideal world, each peer in a P2P network would be able to redistribute more bytes than it receives. A P2PTV system built from such peers can support a virtually unlimited number of peers; with only a single copy of content stream injected into the network, it can redistribute the content to all peers. Two factors in the development of the Internet prevented the realization of this scenario: the deployment of asymmetric access networks and the adoption of NAT boxes.