Obsolete:pCDN: Peer-assisted Content Distribution Network

This project employs the peer-to-peer (P2P) computing paradigm in designing large-scale content distribution systems. The P2P paradigm provides: (i) improved scalability by aggregating resource contributions from peers (end user machines) and reducing the reliance on centralized servers, (ii) reduced cost by utilizing already-deployed resources and eliminating the need for expensive infrastructure, and (iii) rapid deployability by performing all processing at the end systems.

Major content distribution networks, such as Akamai, consider the P2P paradigm as a real threat for their content distribution business. This is because the P2P paradigm may achieve similar services with a fraction of the cost. However, there are several research challenges that need to be addressed to enable the P2P paradigm to achieve this potential. In this research, we tackle these research challenges. Our goal is to develop a fully functional and reliable P2P content distribution system, which we call pCDN. Several steps have been made towards that goal. In fact, we already have a beta version of pCDN 1.0.

pCDN will provide high-quality multimedia content, support heterogeneous clients, impose minimal load on the expensive inter-ISP links, provide on-demand as well as live streaming services, ensure data integrity, implement digital rights management, among other features. All features are based on novel algorithms developed by our group.

pCDN is developed in partnership with the [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation www.cbc.ca] (CBC) to design a cost-effective, high-quality, multimedia content distribution system based on the P2P paradigm. CBC is the largest Internet content provider in Canada with millions of online users consuming a huge amount of bandwidth, which costs CBC millions of dollars each year. Our goal is to offset some of these costs while providing better streaming services to clients. We have already developed version 1 of the system and it is currently in the final testing phases by CBC to be released to the public. Testing is being performed on small Internet streaming services, and the system will gradually evolve to larger-scale important services.

CBC has contributed a funding of more than $130,000 towards this project. In addition, we have secured an NSERC CRD grant of $210,000 over three years. We attribute most of the success of the P2P project to our previous Discovery grant, which provided us the flexibility needed to explore the potential of P2P computing paradigm. The fund from CBC and NSERC CRD will go to more defined, lower risk, research problems. In the current proposal, we will build on our experience in multimedia networking to explore another research direction with great potential: scalable multimedia communication. We plan to take a similar path as in our previous Discovery grant: once we have initial results, we will approach industrial institutions that might be interested in our research.

Progress

• Progress Report and Weekly Meeting Minutes
• Scrum Backlog
• Feature List
• Test Plan
• Restructuring
• Geo-Fencing

Software

• Release
• Installation
• FAQ: Please check the FAQ page before submitting a bug report.
• Howto Report a Bug
• Quality Assurance
• Browse Source code

Documents

• Test Plan
• License Agreement
• Log File
• Port Assignment
• Stress-test Emulator
• NAT Support

People

• Mohamed Hefeeda

• Cheng-Hsin Hsu (PhD student)

• Majid Bagheri (PhD student)

• Kianoosh Mokhtarian (MSc student)

• Nitin Chiluka (Research Assistant/Software Engineer)

• Bernard Jules (CBC,

• Pouya Alagheband (NSERC Undergraduate Research Awards, Summer 2007)

• Nicolas Gomez (NSERC Undergraduate Research Awards, Summer 2007)