On Using Seeders for P2P Live Streaming

Abstract: Seeders (peers that do not request anything but contribute to the system) are a powerful concept in peer-to-peer (P2P). They allow to leverage the capacities of a P2P system. While seeding is a natural idea for filesharing or video-on-demand applications, it seems somehow counter-intuitive in the context of live streaming. This paper aims at describing the feasibility and performance of P2P live seeding. After a formal definition of "live seeding" and efficiency, we consider the theoretical performance of systems where the overhead is neglected. We then propose a linear overhead model and extend the results for this model, for a single seeder and for a set of seeders as well (it is not always possible to perfectly aggregate individual efficiencies in a given system).