Distributed Multimedia Streaming over Peer-to-Peer Networks Jin B. Kwon 1 and Heon Y. Yeom 2 1 Sunmoon University, Dept. of Computer Science, Asan, Chungnam, 336-708, South Korea jbkwon@sunmoon.ac.kr 2 Seoul National University, Dept. of Computer Science, Seoul, 151-742, South Korea yeom@dcslab.snu.ac.kr Abstract. A peer-to-peer model is very useful in solving the server link bottleneck problem of a client-server model. In this work, we discuss the problems of distributing multimedia content over peer-to-peer network. We focus on two problems in peer-to-peer media content distribution systems. The first is the transmission scheduling of the media data for a multi-source streaming session. We present a sophisticated scheduling scheme, which results in minimum buffering delay. The second problem is on the fast distribution of media content in the peer-to-peer system that is self-growing. We propose a mechanism accelerating the speed at which the system’s streaming capacity increases. 1 Introduction It is generally believed that the streaming media will constitute a significant fraction of the Internet traffic in the near future. Almost all of the existing works on multimedia streaming is based on client-server models. Since multi- media streaming requires high bandwidth, server network bandwidth runs out rapidly if unicast client-server model is used. Single source multicast is one of the solutions that use a single stream to feed all the clients. The deployment of IP multicast has been slowed by difficult issues related to scalability, and support for higher layer functionality like congestion control and reliability. A peer-to- peer(P2P) model is ideal as a model to solve the server link bottleneck problem. In the P2P model, multimedia contents are distributed by using the bandwidth of the clients themselves. The clients in P2P systems contribute resources to the community and in turn use the resources provided by other clients. More specifically, supplying peers holding a certain media file may stream it to requesting peers. Thus, data traffic is not localized on a specific site since the peers cooperate for sharing contents. It is typical that there is no central server that holds the contents, and peers work on an equal footing. How the contents exist at first in the P2P system is another question. We assume that there are seed peers. Examples of P2P content distribution systems include Napster[2], Gnutella[1], and so on.