Peer-to-peer aided live video sharing system

• US 8,116,235 B2
• Filed: 06/04/2010
• Issued: 02/14/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Hu, Yusuo, Luo, Chong, Tang, Jian, Lou, Jian-Guang, Cai, Hua, Li, Jiang
• Primary Examiner(s): Qureshi, Afsar M.
• Application Number:
  US12/794,639
• Publication Number:
  US 20100250678A1
• Time in Patent Office: 620 Days
• Field of Search: 370230-39531, 370256-311, 725148-150
• US Class Current: 370/256
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1072 Discovery involving ranked list compilation of candidate peers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1085 involving dynamic management of active down- or uploading connections
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/21 Server components or server architectures
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23 Processing of content or additional data; Elementary server operations; Server middleware
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2743 Video hosting of uploaded data from client
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/632 using a connection between clients on a wide area network, e.g. setting up a peer-to-peer communication via Internet for retrieving video segments from the hard-disk of other client devices broadcast-related systems characterised by transmission among terminal devices H04H60/80; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

Video data from an upload client is received at a hosting node. A request from a download client is received at a bootstrapping node to receive the video data. The download client to receive the video data directly from the hosting node when the hosting node is below a threshold, wherein the threshold is based at least in part on the maximum number of download clients the hosting node can stream to simultaneously. The download client to receive the video data from peers in a peer-to-peer overlay when the hosting node above the threshold.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving, at a bootstrapping node, a request from a download client to receive video data;

when a load on a hosting node is below a threshold, the bootstrapping node informing the download client to receive the video data directly from the hosting node, wherein the threshold is based at least in part on a maximum number of download clients to which the hosting node can stream simultaneously; and

when the load on the hosting node is above the threshold, the bootstrapping node informing the download client to receive the video data from peers of the download client in a peer-to-peer overlay.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the download client receives a live video stream captured by an upload client.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

the bootstrapping node receiving a request from an upload client for an available hosting node; and

the bootstrapping node sending a hosting node address for the hosting node to the upload client in response to the request.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

the hosting node receiving an upload request from an upload client to upload the video data; and

the hosting node sending an acknowledgement to the upload client in response to the upload request.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising, after the hosting node has started receiving the video data from an upload client, receiving, at the bootstrapping node, video session information associated with the video data.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising the bootstrapping node sending video session information associated with the video data to a database server.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising the download client discovering the peers of the peer-to-peer overlay.

8. One or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media including computer readable instructions that, when executed, perform the method of claim 1.

9. One or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media including computer readable instructions that, when executed, perform a method comprising:

a new peer sending a join request to join a peer-to-peer overlay of a shared video service system;

the new peer receiving peer information for a number of peers of the peer-to-peer overlay near the new peer, and for another number of random peers of the peer-to-peer overlay; and

joining the new peer to the peer-to-peer overlay, wherein the joining comprises;

sending queries to one or more peers of the number of peers near the new peer and receiving acknowledgements from the one or more peers; and

adding the one or more peers to a node set of neighbors of the new peer.

10. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 9, the method further comprising:

adding one or more of the random peers of the another number of peers to the node set.

11. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 10, the method further comprising periodically sending a heartbeat message to one or both of individual peers or individual random peers of the node set.

12. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 11, the method further comprising removing at least one of the individual peers or individual random peers from the node set when a reply to a corresponding sent heartbeat message is not received within a period of time.

13. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 11, the method further comprising removing at least one of the individual peers or individual random peers from the node set when a connection-broken event is received in response to a corresponding sent heartbeat message.

14. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 9, wherein the method includes the new peer receiving the peer information from a bootstrapping node of the peer-to-peer overlay, and wherein the bootstrapping node selects the number of peers and the another number of random peers from a peer cache maintained by the bootstrapping node.

15. The one or more computer readable volatile and non-volatile storage media of claim 9, wherein the method includes sending individual queries to individual peers of the number of peers and receiving individual acknowledgements from the individual peers until a median of distances to the individual queries does not change.

16. A system, comprising:

a hosting node configured to receive video data from an upload client and to stream the video data to one or more download clients of a peer-to-peer overlay; and

a bootstrapping node communicatively coupled to the hosting node, wherein the bootstrapping node is configured to inform an individual download client to receive the video data directly from the hosting node when a load on the hosting node is below a threshold based at least in part on a maximum number of download clients to which the hosting node can stream simultaneously, wherein the bootstrapping node is further configured to inform the individual download client to receive the video data from the one or more download clients in the peer-to-peer overlay when the load on the hosting node has exceeded the threshold.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the hosting node is configured to receive a live video stream captured by the upload client.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising a second hosting node communicatively coupled to the bootstrapping node, the second hosting node to receive second video data from a second upload client and to stream the second video data to one or more download clients of a second peer-to-peer overlay.

19. The system of claim 16, further comprising a database server communicatively coupled to the bootstrapping node, the database server to store video information associated with each of a plurality of video files available on the system.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a web server communicatively coupled to the database server, the web server to provide access to the video information stored on the database server.