Peer-to-peer distributed storage for internet protocol television

• US 20080307107A1
• Filed: 06/08/2007
• Published: 12/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/08/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Knowledge Ventures, L.P. (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Knowledge Ventures, L.P. (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Wei, Bin, Chen, Yih-Farn, Huang, Yennun, Rahe, Jeremy
• Granted Patent: US 9,578,288 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/70 Media network packetisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/108 characterised by resources being split in blocks or fragments
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4147 PVR [Personal Video Recorder] H04N5/76 takes precedence ; arrangements for broadcast with accumulation-type receivers H04H20/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4622 Retrieving content or additional data from different sources, e.g. from a broadcast channel and the Internet web site content organization and management for information retrieval from the Internet G06F16/958; transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82; stock exchange data over packet-switching network H04L12/1804; push services including data channel over packet-switching network H04L12/1859
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• 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 21/6375 for requesting retransmission , e.g. of data packets lost or corrupted during transmission from serverARQ protocols H04L1/18; implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP] H04L69/16
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64322 IP
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/85406 involving a specific file format, e.g. MP4 format
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests

Abstract

A plurality of portions of a video content item is distributed to a plurality of peers, respectively, of a peer-to-peer network. Each of the plurality of portions encodes less than an entire portion of the video content item. A peer of the network retrieves at least a subset of the plurality of portions of the video content item from at least a subset of the peers. The at least the subset of the plurality of portions of the video content item enables recovery of the video content item by the peer.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

distributing a plurality of portions of a video content item to a plurality of peers, respectively, of a peer-to-peer network, wherein each of the plurality of portions encodes less than an entire portion of the video content item; and

retrieving, by a peer of the peer-to-peer network, at least a subset of the plurality of portions of the video content item from at least a subset of the peers, wherein the at least the subset of the plurality of portions of the video content item enables recovery of the video content item by the peer.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of peers are disposed at a plurality of premises in a neighborhood, and wherein the peer-to-peer network comprises a switch that serves the plurality of premises.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the peer-to-peer network comprises a plurality of digital subscriber line (DSL) connections between the plurality of peers and the switch.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

erasure-encoding the video content item to form erasure-encoded data; and

dividing the erasure-encoded data into the plurality of portions.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein said erasure-encoding has a threshold of P % such that the video content item can be recovered using any subset of P % or more of the plurality of portions.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

selecting the at least the subset of the peers from which to retrieve the at least the subset of the plurality of portions so that at least P % of the portions are included.

7. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

mapping the plurality of portions of the video content item to the plurality of peers; and

selecting the at least the subset of the peers from which to retrieve the at least the subset of the plurality of portions based on said mapping.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

forecasting that the video content item is likely to be requested by at least one peer of the peer-to-peer network;

wherein said distributing the plurality of portions of the video content item is performed in response to said forecasting.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said forecasting is based on previous video content requests made to an Internet Protocol Television service.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining that a portion having size S and included in the at least the subset of the portions is not needed by the peer for at least a time T; and

uploading the portion to the peer, said uploading having a maximum upload rate based on S and T.

11. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining that a portion included in the at least the subset of the portions is not needed by the peer for at least a time T; and

uploading the portion to the peer, said uploading being spread over a duration that is at least half of T.

12. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining a failure to retrieve a portion of the video content item from one of the peers; and

retrieving the portion of the video content item from a central server in response to said determining the failure.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

decoding, by the peer, the at least the subset of the plurality of portions of the video content item; and

displaying, by the peer, the video content item based on said decoding.

14. A computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program, the computer program to cause a computer system to:

retrieve, via a peer-to-peer network, a subset of a plurality of portions of an erasure-encoded video content item from a subset of a plurality of peers, respectively, of the peer-to-peer network, wherein each of the subset of the plurality of portions encodes less than an entire portion of the erasure-encoded video content item;

decode the subset of the plurality of portions to recover the video content item; and

play the video content item.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the computer program is to cause the computer system to:

store a portion-to-peer mapping for the video content item; and

select the subset of the peers from which to retrieve the subset of the plurality of portions based on the portion-to-peer mapping.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the erasure-encoded video item has a threshold of P % such that the video content item can be recovered using any subset of P % or more of the plurality of portions, and wherein the computer program is to cause the computer system to:

select the subset of the peers from which to retrieve the subset of the plurality of portions so that at least P % of the portions are included.

17. A system comprising:

an erasure-encoder which erasure-encodes a video content item to form erasure-encoded data; and

a server to distribute a plurality of portions of the erasure-encoded data to a plurality of peers, respectively, of a peer-to-peer network, wherein each of the plurality of portions encodes less than an entire portion of the video content item.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein said erasure-encoder has a threshold of P % such that the video content item can be recovered using any subset of P % or more of the plurality of portions.

19. The system of claim 17 further comprising:

a forecaster to forecast that the video content item is likely to be requested by at least one peer of the peer-to-peer network;

wherein the server is responsive to the forecaster to distribute the plurality of portions of the erasure-encoded data to the plurality of peers.

20. The system of claim 19 wherein the forecaster is to forecast that the video content item is likely to be requested by at least one peer of the peer-to-peer network based on previous video content requests made to an Internet Protocol Television service.