Performance analysis of packet loss recovery policies in P2P video streaming

Packet loss recovery is an important part of P2P video streaming networks due to inevitable packet loss in today’s internet and interdependency of data units in compressed video streams. In addition, the architecture of P2P streaming networks, in which the data delivered to the receivers through chain of peers, can intensify the impact of the internet packet loss on the quality of perceived video at the receivers. FEC and ARQ are the two most important techniques that can be used to overcome the side effect of the internet packet loss in P2P video streaming networks. Based on these two techniques, different packet loss recovery strategies can be applied in different overlay hops of a given P2P streaming network. In this paper, we have modelled and analysed the performance and efficiency of variant packet loss recovery policies can be used in P2P streaming networks. Our analysis show that a hybrid packet loss recovery scheme in which the most important data units are protected by packet level FEC and the remaining lost ones are recovered through retransmission (i.e., ARQ) is the most efficient strategy that improves the performance of P2P video streaming networks.