Serverless peer-to-peer multi-party real-time audio communication system and method
First Claim
1. A method for a multi-party, real-time communication session using peer nodes in a peer-to-peer computer network, comprising:
- dividing an input stream into a plurality of frames;
assigning each frame to the peer nodes such that a peer node receives a number of frames proportional to the available resources of the peer node; and
rotating processing of the plurality of frames among at least some of the peer nodes to provide the multi-party real-time communication session.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A serverless peer-to-peer (P2P) multi-party real-time audio communication system and method in which each of the peers takes a turn mixing and compressing the audio and redelivering the compressed audio. An input audio stream is divided or split into frames. At each frame, one peer node is selected to mix and redeliver the audio to the remainder of the peers in the network. The number of frames mixed and redelivered by a certain peer is proportional to its available resources (such as the upload bandwidth or computational power). The P2P audio communication system and method flexibly balances the load of the peers, such that peers having more resources are able to assist peers having fewer resources. This enables the P2P audio communication system and method to conduct a multi-party audio communication session without the need for powerful servers or peers.
86 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method for a multi-party, real-time communication session using peer nodes in a peer-to-peer computer network, comprising:
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dividing an input stream into a plurality of frames;
assigning each frame to the peer nodes such that a peer node receives a number of frames proportional to the available resources of the peer node; and
rotating processing of the plurality of frames among at least some of the peer nodes to provide the multi-party real-time communication session. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A computer-implemented process for conducting a multi-party real-time audio communication session between peer nodes in a peer-to-peer computer network, each of the peer nodes having an audio stream, comprising:
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a packet splitting step for splitting the audio stream from each of the peer nodes into audio packets;
an audio mixing step for combining audio packets from a certain time from each of the peer nodes to generate a mixed audio packet at that time; and
a rotation step for assigning audio mixing of mixed audio packets and redelivery of the mixed audio packets to each of the peer nodes on a rotating basis, such that at least some of the peer nodes have a turn performing audio mixing and redelivery. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A peer-to-peer audio communication system for engaging in a multi-party real-time audio communication session between peer node in a peer-to-peer network, comprising:
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an audio packet module that divides an input audio stream having audio content into a plurality of audio frames;
an audio mixer that performs mixing of the audio frames from each of the peer nodes at a particular frame to produce a mixed audio packet at each of the plurality of audio frames;
a round robin processing technique that assigns audio mixing and redelivery of the mixed audio content one at a time to each of the peer nodes in a round robin manner; and
an audio decoder that decodes the redelivered mixed audio content to obtain audio for the audio communication session.
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Specification