Chapter 12 A Survey of P 2 P Data-Driven Live Streaming Systems

Internet-based media streaming has been a longstanding subject in networking research. Only quite recently has it become a thriving and viable application, attracting widespread interest from both users and service providers. The rapid growth of the Internet during the last two decades, together with the development of cheap, powerful hardware, and the widespread deployment of broadband access technologies (such as cable and DSL), have contributed to the profound change in the way streaming is perceived today. The progression from the early days of do-it-yourself Internet radio (e.g. Shoutcast in the late nineties) to the development of huge on-demand media repositories has been so fast that, from a niche application used by few amateurs, streaming has ABSTRACT