Mobile peer-to-peer video streaming over information-centric networks

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a network paradigm alternative to the classic host-centric communication model: it provides users with content exposed as names, instead of providing communication channels between hosts. In this paper, we present a peer-to-peer application for live streaming of video content encoded at multiple bit rates. The application enables a small set of neighbouring cellular/Wi-Fi devices to increase the quality of video playback by using the Wi-Fi network to share the portion of the live stream downloaded by each peer via the cellular network. The application exploits the main functionalities of ICN: routing by name, in network caching and multicast delivery. Our work includes the implementation of a Java prototype of the application on a test-bed composed by Linux machines running the CCNx tool and streaming MPEG-DASH videos. We measured the performance of our solution and verified on the field that ICN simplifies the development of applications, as it provides built-in functions, which would be much more difficult to implement by relying on classical TCP/IP tools only.