PPSP Y. Zhang
Internet Draft China Mobile
N.Zong
HuaweiTech
Intended status: Informational June 28, 2012
Expires: December 2012
Problem Statement and Requirements of Peer-to-Peer Streaming
Protocol (PPSP)
draft-ietf-ppsp-problem-statement-09.txt
Abstract
Peer-to-Peer (P2P for short) streaming systems show more and more
popularity in current Internet with proprietary protocols. This
document identifies problems of the proprietary protocols, proposes a
Peer to Peer Streaming Protocol (PPSP) including tracker and peer
signaling, and discusses the design scope, requirements and uses
cases of PPSP.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 1]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 28, 2012.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 2]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................ 4
2. Terminology and concepts..................................... 5
3. Problem statement ........................................... 7
3.1. Traffic issue and difficulties for ISPs in deploying P2P
caches ...................................................... 7
3.2. Efficiency issue and difficulties in building open streaming
delivery infrastructure...................................... 7
3.3. Extended applicability issue and difficulties in mobile and
wireless environment......................................... 7
4. PPSP: Standard peer to peer streaming protocols ............. 9
4.1. Candidate protocols discussion and design issues........10
5. Use cases of PPSP .......................................... 11
5.1. Worldwide provision of live/VoD streaming ..............11
5.2. PPSP supporting cross-screen streaming in heterogeneous
environment ................................................ 13
5.3. Cache service supporting P2P streaming .................14
6. Security Considerations..................................... 16
7. Requirements of PPSP........................................ 17
7.1. Basic Requirements..................................... 17
7.2. PPSP Tracker Protocol Requirements .....................18
7.3. PPSP Peer Protocol Requirements ........................20
7.4. Security Requirements.................................. 21
8. IANA Considerations ........................................ 23
9. Acknowledgments ............................................ 24
10. Informative References .................................... 25
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 3]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
1. Introduction
Streaming traffic is among the largest and fastest growing traffic on
the Internet [Cisco], where peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming contribute a
lot. With the advantage of high scalability and fault tolerance
against single point of failure, P2P streaming applications are able
to distribute large-scale, live and VoD streaming programs to
millions of audience with only a handful of servers. What's more,
along with the new players like CDN providers joining in the effort
of using P2P technologies in distributing their serving streaming
content, there are more and more various players in P2P streaming
ecosystem.
Given the increasing integration of P2P streaming into the global
content delivery infrastructure, the lack of an open, standard P2P
streaming signaling protocol suite becomes a major missing component
in the protocol stack. Almost all of existing systems use their
proprietary protocols. Multiple, similar but proprietary protocols
result in repetitious development efforts for new systems, and the
lock-in effects lead to substantial difficulties in their integration
with other players like CDN. For example, in the enhancement of
existing caches and CDN systems to support P2P streaming, proprietary
protocols may increase the complexity of the interaction with
different P2P streaming applications.
In this document we propose an open P2P Streaming Protocol, which is
defined as PPSP, to standardize signaling operations in P2P streaming
systems to solve the above problems.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 4]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
2. Terminology and concepts
Chunk: A chunk is a basic unit of data block organized in P2P
streaming for storage, scheduling, advertisement and exchange among
peers [VoD]. A chunk size varies from several KB to several MB in
different systems. In case of MB size chunk scenario, a sub-chunk
structure named piece is often defined to fit in a single transmitted
packet. A streaming system may use different granularities for
different usage, e.g., using chunks during data exchange, and using a
larger unit such as a set of chunks during advertisement.
Content Distribution Network (CDN): A CDN node refers to a network
entity that is deployed in the network (e.g., at the network edge or
data centers) to store content provided by the original servers, and
serves content to the clients located nearby topologically.
Client: A client refers to the service requester in client/server
computing paradigm. In this draft a client refers to a participant in
a P2P streaming system that only receives streaming content. In some
cases the node is not eligible to be a peer without enough computing
and storage capability is acting as a client. It can be viewed as a
specific kind of peer.
Live streaming: It refers to a scenario where all clients receive
streaming content for the same ongoing event. It is desired that the
lags between the play points of the clients and that of the streaming
source be small.
P2P cache: A P2P cache refers to a network entity that caches P2P
traffic in the network, and either transparently or explicitly as a
peer distributes content to other peers.
Peer: A peer refers to a participant in a P2P streaming system that
not only receives streaming content, but also stores and uploads
streaming content to other participants.
PPSP: The abbreviation of Peer-to-Peer Streaming Protocols. PPSP
refer to the key signaling protocols among various P2P streaming
system components, including the tracker and the peer.
Swarm: A swarm refers to a group of peers who exchange data to
distribute chunks of the same content (e.g. video/audio program,
digital file, etc) at a given time.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 5]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Tracker: A tracker refers to a directory server which maintains a
list of peers which participate in a specific video channel or in the
distribution of a streaming file, and answers queries from peers for
peer lists. The tracker is a logical component which can be
centralized or distributed.
Video-on-demand (VoD): It refers to a scenario where different
clients may watch different parts of the same recorded media with
downloaded content.
Peer list: A list of peers which are in a same swarm maintained by
the tracker. A peer can fetch the peer list of a swarm from either
tracker or other peers to know which peers have the required
streaming content.
Peer ID: An identifier of a peer such that other peers or tracker can
refer the ID for the peer.
Swarm ID: An identifier of a swarm containing a group of peers
sharing a same streaming content.
Chunk ID: An identifier of a chunk in a streaming content.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 6]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
3. Problem statement
The problems imposed by proprietary protocols for P2P streaming
applications are listed as follows.
3.1. Traffic issue and difficulties for ISPs in deploying P2P caches
Facing with many P2P streaming applications, ISPs are witnessing a
big traffic tension on their backbone and inter-networking points.P2P
caches are used for ISPs to reduce the traffic by dynamically storing
the frequently accessed streaming content (in chunk or in file
granularity).
However, unlike the Web where all kinds of the infrastructure devices
have been already equipped with standard HTTP protocol, cache systems
have to build a matching library to identify different P2P streaming
protocols firstly. Multiple ever changing proprietary protocols
require the cache system updating its matching library constantly.
This increases the operator's cost dramatically.
3.2. Efficiency issue and difficulties in building open streaming
delivery infrastructure
P2P streaming is often criticized by its inefficiency in terms of
longer delays (e.g., startup delay, seek delay and channel switch
delay) than client/server streaming. Hybrid CDN/P2P is a good means
to solve this problem for operators [Hybrid CDN P2P].
In such design, CDN takes two roles: one is for media streaming
server and the other is for P2P tracker. A tracker is an essential
component in P2P streaming systems to direct the requesting peers
for possible serving peers and contents. Section 2 gives detailed
description on the tracker.Proprietary protocols introduce complexity
between the peer and CDN tracker interaction. Like the cache node in
section 3.1, the CDN tracker has to identify different systems with
different protocols. This increases the deployment cost.
3.3. Extended applicability issue and difficulties in mobile and
wireless environment
Mobility and wireless are becoming increasingly important in today's
Internet, where streaming service is a major usage. In Korea the
number of mobile TV subscriber has reached seventeen million,
accounting for one third of the mobile subscribers. There are
multiple prior studies exploring P2P streaming in mobile and wireless
networks [Mobile Streaming1] [Mobile Streaming2].
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 7]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
However it's difficult to copy current P2P streaming protocols (even
we suppose we can re-use the proprietary ones) in mobile and wireless
networks. Although smart handsets are more eligible to become peers
with much higher bandwidth and CPU frequency, larger storage and
memory than before, peer selection becomes more challenging which
needs more information to exchange during the tracker/peer and
peer/peer communications, which are not involved in current protocols
designed mainly for fixed Internet.
First, the connections are unsteady and costly in terms of energy
consumption and transmission (esp. in uplink). The trackers and peers
may need more information like packet loss rate, peer battery status
and processing capability in peer selection. Unfortunately current
protocols don't cover these kinds of information.
Second, current practices often use a "bitmap" message to exchange
chunk availability among peers and trackers. The message is some
kilobytes size and exchanged frequently, say, several seconds. In a
mobile environment with scarce bandwidth, the message size need to be
shortened or it may require other methods for expressing and
distributing chunk availability information.
Third, for a resource constraint peer like mobile handsets or set-top
boxes (STB), there are severe contentions on limited resource using
proprietary protocols. The peer has to install many different
streaming applications for different usages, e.g., some for movies
and others for sports. Note that for many P2P applications, even the
users don't use them at this moment, they may be invoked as the
background programs to facilitate other users for free data delivery
assistance. This makes the mobile handsets or STBs more short of
resources on the running applications. Only open protocols can
alleviate this problem.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 8]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
4. PPSP: Standard peer to peer streaming protocols
PPSP is targeted to standardize signaling protocols for tracker-based
architectures to solve the above problems that support either live or
offline streaming.
The PPSP design includes a signaling protocol between trackers and
peers (the PPSP "tracker protocol") and a signaling protocol among
the peers (the PPSP "peer protocol") as shown in Figure 1.The two
protocols enable peers to receive streaming data within the time
constraints required by specific content items. The tracker protocol
handles the initial and periodic exchange of meta information between
trackers and peers, such as peer-list and content information. The
peer protocol controls the advertising and exchange of media data
between the peers.
+------------------------------------------------+
| |
| +--------------------------------+ |
| | Tracker | |
| +--------------------------------+ |
| | ^ ^ |
|Tracker | | Tracker |Tracker |
|Protocol| | Procotol |Protocol |
| | | | |
| V | | |
| +---------+ Peer +---------+ |
| | Peer |<----------->| Peer | |
| +---------+ Protocol +---------+ |
| | ^ |
| | |Peer |
| | |Protocol |
| V | |
| +---------------+ |
| | Peer | |
| +---------------+ |
| |
| |
+------------------------------------------------+
Figure 1 PPSP System Architecture
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 9]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
4.1. Candidate protocols discussion and design issues
Tracker protocol: The tracker protocol is best modeled as a
request/response protocol between peers and trackers, and will carry
information needed for the selection of peers suitable for real-
time/offline streaming. Therefore the HTTP is a natural choice as the
candidate of the PPSP tracker protocol.
The following question asked is about the on-the-wire format of the
carried message. There are three options:
First, binary based: HTTP is only for the underlying transport (in
application-level) protocol and the real information are delivered in
binary carried by HTTP messages (e.g., through BASE64 encoding). This
is uneasy to read and debug.
Second, text based: reusing HTTP messages to construct PPSP tracker
message as much as possible and redefine them if they don't match
PPSP requirements. Many new messages may be redefined.
Third, HTTP+XML based: This is also a text-based option. In this way,
the role of HTTP is similar to the first option. The difference is that
the tracker information are defined in XML format in HTTP messages. This
is most flexible.
The work of selecting best appropriate track protocol is in the scope of
PPSP tracker protocol.
Peer Protocol: The peer protocol is modeled as a gossip-like protocol
with periodic exchanges of neighbor and media chunk availability
information. That is to say, we need a content-centric protocol built
around the abstraction of a cloud of participants disseminating the
same data in any way and order that is convenient to them [I-
D.ietf-ppsp-peer-protocol]. Obviously typical HTTP is neither
suitable nor efficient in this abstraction.
We list two candidates on peer protocol:
First, Websockets for bidirectional HTTP: WebSockets is basically
just a TCP connection derived from a HTTP connection. This means you
can use it as a bidirectional transport to run a P2P protocol over.
On the negative side, TCP is not ideally suited for multi-party
transfers of the same content (see Rationale section in I-D.ietf-
ppsp-peer-protocol) and having to use HTTP first adds some (code)
complexity.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 10]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Second, UDP based: Unlike TCP or HTTP, UDP is a datagram-based
protocol completely dropping the sequential data stream abstraction,
which is in most cases unnecessary for PPSP. This also reduces the
higher per-connection footprint, complexity and less reliablility in
NAT traversal using TCP especially in resource constraint cases such
as mobile P2P streaming.
PPSP peer protocol will discuss the protocol design rationales in
detail.
5. Use cases of PPSP
5.1. Worldwide provision of live/VoD streaming
The content provider can easily expand the broadcasting/VoD scale to
utilize the cooperative content providers' CDN or third party CDN
with PPSP.
Figure 2 shows the case that provider A broadcasts the program with
the help of provider B and C for a wider coverage. Without PPSP, when
users in B or C's domain (outside A's main serving zone) requests A's
programs, the returned peer-list may include few local peers. This
may hurt the user experience in P2P environment. With PPSP more local
resources from cooperative vendors may be utilized. The content
providers often deploy in-network peers called super-nodes (SN for
short) who have better stability and higher storage and bandwidth for
better QoS. With tracker protocol, vendor A's tracker can returns
with vendor B and vendor C's SNs in the peer-list. User@B and User@C
can exchange data (availability) with these SNs using peer protocol.
In this way vendor B and vendor C's SNs are shared and vendor A
expands its serving scale with acceptable QoS.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 11]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| +------------------+ |
| +------------>| A's Tracker |<----------+ |
| | +------------------+ | |
| Tracker| ^ ^ | |
| Protocol| Tracker| |Tracker |Tracker |
| | Protocol| |Protocol |Protocol |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| v v v v |
| +------+ Peer +------+ +------+ +------+ |
| | B's |<------->| B's | | C's | | C's | |
| | SN1 |Protocol | SN2 | | SN1 | | SN2 | |
| +------+ +------+ +------+ +------+ |
| ^ ^ ^ ^ |
| | | | | |
| | | Peer Protocol Peer Protocol| | |
| Peer | +-------------+ +--------------+ |Peer |
| Procotol| | | |protocol|
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| v v v v |
| +------+ Peer +------+ +---------+ Peer +---------+ |
| | A's |<------> | B's | |A's |<------> |C's | |
| | User1|Protocol | User2| | User1 |Protocol | User2 | |
| +------+ +------+ +---------+ +---------+ |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 2 Cooperative Vendors Interaction
Figure 3 is similar to Figure 2 except that the intermediate SNs are
replaced by 3rd party CDN surrogates with PPSP. The CDN nodes talk
with the different vendors (including the peers inside) with the same
protocols. In this way both HTTP streaming and P2P streaming can be
supported.
The internal interaction of CDN nodes can be executed by either
existing protocol or peer protocol. The latter is useful in building
new CDN systems supporting streaming because the cost can be reduced
in a P2P way.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 12]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| +-------------+ +--------------+ |
| +----->| A's Tracker | | B's Tracker |<---+ |
| | +-------------+ +--------------+ | |
| Tracker| ^ ^ ^ ^ | |
| Protocol| Tracker| |Tracker | |Tracker |Tracker |
| | Protocol| |Protocol| |Protocol |Protocol|
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| v v | | v v |
| +------+ Peer +------+| | +------+Internal+------+ |
| | CDN |<------>| CDN || | | CDN |<-----> | CDN | |
| | Node1|Protocol| Node2|| | | Node3|Protocol| Node4| |
| +------+ +------+| | +------+ +------+ |
| ^ ^ | | ^ ^ |
| | | | | | | |
| | | Peer Protocol | | HTTP | | |
| Peer | +-------------+ | | +------+ | Peer |
| Procotol| | | | | Protocol |protocol|
| | | +-+ | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| v v v v v v |
| +------+ Peer +------+ +---------+ Peer +---------+ |
| | A's |<------> | A's | |B's |<------> |B's | |
| | User1|Protocol | User2| | User3 |Protocol | User4 | |
| +------+ +------+ +---------+ +---------+ |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 3 CDN Supporting P2P Streaming
5.2. PPSP supporting cross-screen streaming in heterogeneous environment
In this scenario PC, STB/TV and mobile terminals from both fixed
network and mobile/wireless network share the streaming content. With
PPSP, peers can identify the types of access networks, average load,
peer abilities and get to know what content other peers have even in
different network (potentially with the conversion of the content
availability expression in different networks) as shown in Figure 4.
These information will play an important role on selecting suitable
peers, e.g., a PC or STB is more likely to be selected to provide
stable content for mobile nodes and a mobile peer within a high-load
cell is unlikely to be selected, which may otherwise lead to higher
load on the base station.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 13]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Tracker Protocol +---------+ Tracker Protocol |
| +-------------> | Tracker |<------------------+ |
| | +---------+ | |
| | ^ | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| V | V |
| +------+ | +------------+ |
| | STB | Tracker Protocol |Mobile Phone| |
| +------+ | +------------+ |
| ^ | ^ |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | V | |
| |Peer Protocol +---------+ Peer Protocol | |
| +-------------> | PC |<------------------+ |
| +---------+ |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 4 Heterogeneous P2P Streaming Interaction with PPSP
5.3. Cache service supporting P2P streaming
In Figure 5, when peers request the P2P streaming data, the cache
nodes intercept the requests and request the frequently visited
content (or part of) on behalf of the user peers. To do this, it asks
for the peer-list to the tracker and the tracker replies with
(outward) peers in the peer-list. After the cache nodes exchange data
with these peers, it can also report what it cache to the tracker
like a normal peer and serve other requesting peers inside. This
operation greatly decreases the inter-network traffic and increase
user experience.
The cache nodes needn't update their library when new applications
supporting PPSP are introduced, which reduce the cost.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 14]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 0:Tracker Protocol +---------+ |
| +----------------> | Tracker | |
| | +---------+ |
| | ^ |
| | | |
| | 2: | Tracker Protocol |
| | | |
| | | |
| | +---------|-------------------------------------|
| | | V |
| | | +---------+ |
| | +----------|---> | Cache |<-------------------+ |
| | | | +---------+ 1,4: Tracker/Peer| |
| | |3: Peer | Protocol | |
| | | Protocol | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| V V | V |
| +-----------+ | ISP Domain +------------+ |
| | Outward | | | Inside | |
| | Peer | | | Peer | |
| +-----------+ | +------------+ |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
Figure 5 Cache Service Supporting Streaming with PPSP
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 15]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
6. Security Considerations
This document discusses the problem statement around Peer-to-Peer
streaming protocols without specifying the protocols. The protocol
specification is deferred to other documents under development.
However we believe it is important for the reader to understand areas
of security caused by the P2P nature of the proposed solution. The
main issue is the usage of un-trusted entities (peers) for service
provisioning.
Malicious peers may, for example:
- Issue denial of service (DOS) attacks to the trackers by sending
large amount of requests with the tracker protocol;
- Issue fake information on behalf of other peers;
- Issue fake information about available content;
- Issue fake information about chunk availability;
Malicious peers/trackers may, for example:
- Issue reply instead of the regular tracker (man in the middle
attack).
The PPSP protocol specifications will document the expected threats
and how they will be mitigated for each protocol, but also
considerations on threats and mitigations when combining both
protocols in an application. This will include privacy of the users,
protection of the content distribution, but not protection of the
content by Digital Rights Management (DRM).
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 16]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
7. Requirements of PPSP
This section enumerates the requirements for the PPSP, which should
be considered when designing PPSP.
7.1. Basic Requirements
PPSP.REQ-1: The tracker and the peer protocols SHOULD be as similar
as possible, in terms of design, message formats and flows.
It is desirable that the peer protocol would be an extension to the
tracker protocol by adding a few message types, or vice versa.
PPSP.REQ-2: The tracker protocol and the peer protocol SHOULD enable
peers to receive streaming content within the required time
constraints, i.e., fulfill streaming feature.
PPSP.REQ-3: Each peer MUST have a unique ID (i.e. peer ID)in aswarm.
It's a basic requirement for a peer to be uniquely identified in a
swarm that other peers or tracker can refer to the peer by ID.
PPSP.REQ-4: The streaming content MUST be uniquely identified by a
swarm ID.
A swarm refers to a group of peers sharing the same streaming content
A swarm ID uniquely identifies a swarm. The swarm ID can be used in
two cases: 1) a peer requests the tracker for the peer list indexed
by a swarm ID; 2) a peer tells the tracker about the swarms it
belongs to.
PPSP.REQ-5: The streaming content MUST allow to be partitioned into
chunks.
A key characteristic of P2P streaming system is allowing the data
fetching from different peers concurrently. Therefore, the whole
streaming content must allow to be partitioned into small pieces or
chunks for transmission between peers.
PPSP.REQ-6: Each chunk MUST have a unique ID (i.e. chunk ID) in the
swarm.
Each chunk must have a unique ID in the swarm such as the peer can
understand which chunks are stored in which peers and which chunks.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 17]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
are requested by other peers. An example for generating the chunk ID
is the buffer map approach [I-D.ietf-ppsp-survey].
PPSP.REQ-7: The tracker protocol and peer protocol are recommended to
be carried over TCP (or UDP, when delivery requirements cannot be met
by TCP).
PPSP.REQ-8: The tracker and peer protocol together MUST facilitate
acceptable QoS (e.g. low startup delay, low channel/content switching
time and minimal end-to-end delay) for both on-demand and live
streaming, even for very popular content. The tracker and peer
protocol do not include the algorithm required for scalable
streaming. However, the tracker and peer protocol SHALL NOT restrict
or place limits on any such algorithm.
There are basic QoS requirements for streaming system. Setup time to
receive a new streaming channel or to switch between channels should
be reasonable small. End to end delay (time between content
generation, e.g. camera and content consumption, e.g. user side
monitor) will become critical in case of live streaming. Especially
in provisioning of sports events, end to end delay of 1 minute and
more are not acceptable.
For instance, the tracker and peer protocols can support carrying QoS
related parameters (e.g. video quality, delay requirements) together
with the priorities of these parameters, and QoS situation (e.g.,
performance, available uplink bandwidth) of content providing peers.
There are also some other possible mechanisms, e.g. addition of super
peers, in-network storage, request of alternative peer addresses, and
the usage of QoS information for an advanced peer selection.
7.2. PPSP Tracker Protocol Requirements
The tracker protocol defines how the peers report and request
information to/from the tracker and how the tracker replies to the
requests. The tracker discovery and the possible communication
between trackers are out of the scope of tracker protocol.
PPSP.TP.REQ-1: The tracker MUST implement the tracker protocol for
receiving queries and periodical peer status reports/updates from the
peers and for sending the corresponding replies.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 18]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
PPSP.TP.REQ-2: The peer MUST implement the tracker protocol for
sending queries and periodical peer status reports/updates to the
tracker and receiving the corresponding replies.
PPSP.TP.REQ-3: The tracker request message MUST allow the requesting
peer to solicit the peer list from the tracker with respect to a
specific swarm ID.
The tracker request message may also include the requesting peer's
preference parameter, e.g. preferred number of peers in the peer
list, or preferred downloading bandwidth. The track will then be
able to select an appropriate set of peers for the requesting peer
according to the preference.
PPSP.TP.REQ-4: The tracker reply message MUST allow the tracker to
offer the peer list to the requesting peer with respect of a specific
swarm ID.
PPSP.TP.REQ-5: The tracker SHOULD support generating the peer list
with the help of traffic optimization services, e.g. ALTO [I-D.ietf-
alto-protocol].
PPSP.TP.REQ-6: The peer status report/update MUST have the ability to
inform the tracker about the peer's activity in the swarm.
PPSP.TP.REQ-7: The chunk availability information of the peer SHOULD
be reported to tracker when tracker needs such information to steer
peer selection. The chunk information MUST at least contain the
chunk ID.
PPSP.TP.REQ-8: The chunk availability information between peer and
tracker MUST be as expressed as compactly as possible.
The peers may report CHUNK AVAILABILTY DIGEST information (i.e.,
compact expression of chunk availability) to the tracker when
possible to decrease the bandwidth consumption for messages in
bandwidth constraint environment like mobile network. For example,
if a peer has a bitmap like 111111...1(100 continuous 1)xxx..., the
100 continuous "1" can be expressed by one byte with seven bits
representing 100 and one bit representing "1".In this example, 100-
8=92 bits are saved. Considering the frequency of exchange of CHUNK
AVAILBILITY and the fact that many bitmaps have quite a long length
of continuous "1" or "0", such compression makes sense.
PPSP.TP.REQ-9: The status of the peer SHOULD be reported to the
tracker when tracker needs such information to steer peer selection.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 19]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
For example, peer status can be online time, physical link status
including DSL/WIFI/etc, battery status, processing capability, and
other capabilities of the peer. Therefore, the tracker is able to
select better candidate peers for streaming.
7.3. PPSP Peer Protocol Requirements
The peer protocol defines how the peers advertise streaming content
availability and exchange status with each other. The peer protocol
also defines the requests and responses of the chunks among the
peers. The first task for this WG will be to decide which signaling
and media transfer protocols will be used. The WG will consider
existing protocols and, if needed, identify potential extensions to
these protocols.
PPSP.PP.REQ-1: The streaming content availability request message
MUST allow the peer to solicit the chunk information from other peers
in the peer list. The chunk information MUST at least contain the
chunk ID. This chunk availability information MUST NOT be passed on
to other peer, unless validated (e.g. prevent hearsay and DoS).
PPSP.PP.REQ-2: The streaming content availability reply message MUST
allow the peer to offer the information of the chunks in its content
buffer. The chunk information MUST at least contain the chunk ID.
PPSP.PP.REQ-3: The streaming content availability request message
SHOULD allow the peer to solicit an additional list of peers to that
received from the tracker - with the same swarm ID. The reply
message MUST contain swarm-membership information of the peers that
have explicitly indicated they are part of the swarm, verifiable by
the receiver. This additional list of peers MUST only contain peers
which have been checked to be valid and online recently (e.g. prevent
hearsay and DoS).
It is possible that a peer may need additional peers for certain
streaming content. Therefore, it is allowed that the peer
communicates with the peers in the current peer list to obtain an
additional list of peers in the same swarm.
PPSP.PP.REQ-4: Streaming content availability update message among
the peers MUST be supported by peer protocol. In the push based
model, where peers advocate their own chunk availability proactively,
the content availability request message described in PP.REQ-1 is not
needed. The peer protocol MUST implement either pull-based, push-
based or both.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 20]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Due to the dynamic change of the buffered streaming content in each
peer and the frequent join/leave of peers in the swarm, the streaming
content availability among a peer's neighbors (i.e. the peers known
to a peer by getting the peer lists from either tracker or peers)
always changes and thus requires being updated on time. This update
should be done at least on demand. For example, when a peer requires
finding more peers with certain chunks, it sends a message to some
other peers in the swarm for streaming content availability update.
Alternatively, each peer in the swarm can advertise its streaming
content availability to some other peers periodically. However, the
detailed mechanisms for this update such as how far to spread such
update message, how often to send this update message, etc should
leave to peer algorithms, rather than protocol concerns.
PPSP.PP.REQ-5: The chunk availability information between peers MUST
be as expressed as compactly as possible.
In PP.REQ-1/2/4, the peers may exchange CHUNK AVAILABILTY DIGEST
information (i.e. compact expression of chunk availability) to with
other peers when possible to decrease the bandwidth consumption for
messages in bandwidth constraint environment like mobile network.
PPSP.PP.REQ-6: The peer status report/update SHOULD be advertised
among the peers to reflect the status of the peer.
Peer status information should be advertised among the peers via the
peer status report/update message. For example, peer status can be
online time, physical link status including DSL/WIFI/etc, battery
status, processing capability, and other capabilities of the peer.
With this information, a peer can select more appropriate peers for
streaming.
PPSP.PP.REQ-7: The peers MUST implement the peer protocol for chunk
data (not availability information) requests and responses among the
peers before the streaming content is transmitted.
7.4. Security Requirements
PPSP.SEC.REQ-1: PPSP MUST support closed swarms, where the peers are
authenticated.
This ensures that only the authenticated users can access the
original media in the P2P streaming system. This can be achieved by
security mechanisms such as user authentication and/or key management
scheme.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 21]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
PPSP.SEC.REQ-2: Confidentiality of the streaming content in PPSP
SHOULD be supported and the corresponding key management scheme
SHOULD scale well in P2P streaming system.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-3: PPSP MUST provide an option to encrypt the data
exchange among the PPSP entities.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-4: PPSP MUST have mechanisms to limit potential damage
caused by malfunctioning and badly behaving peers in the P2P
streaming system.
Such an attack will degrade the quality of the rendered media at the
receiver. For example, in a P2P live video streaming system a
polluter can introduce corrupted chunks. Each receiver integrates
into its playback stream the polluted chunks it receives from its
other neighbors. Since the peers forwards chunks to other peers, the
polluted content can potentially spread through much of the P2P
streaming network.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-5: PPSP SHOULD support identifying badly behaving peers,
and exclude or reject them from the P2P streaming system.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-6: PPSP MUST prevent peers from DoS attacks which will
exhaust the P2P streaming system's available resource.
Given the prevalence of DoS attacks in the Internet, it is important
to realize that a similar threat could exist in a large-scale
streaming system where attackers are capable of consuming a lot of
resources with just a small amount of effort.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-7: PPSP SHOULD be robust, i.e., when centralized tracker
fails the P2P streaming system SHOULD still work by supporting
distributed trackers.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-8: Existing P2P security mechanisms SHOULD be re-used as
much as possible in PPSP, to avoid developing new security
mechanisms.
PPSP.SEC.REQ-9: Integrity of the streaming content in PPSP MUST be
supported to provide a peer with the possibility to identify
inauthentic media content (undesirable modified by other entities
rather than its genuine source). The corresponding checksum
distribution and verification scheme SHOULD scale well in P2P
streaming system and be robust against distrustful trackers/peers.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 22]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
8. IANA Considerations
This document has no actions for IANA.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 23]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
9. Acknowledgments
Thank you to J.Seng, G. Camarillo and R. Yang for contribution to
many sections of this draft. Thank you to C. Williams, V. Pasual and
L. Xiao for contributions to PPSP requirements section.
We would like to acknowledge the following people who provided
review, feedback and suggestions to this document: M. Stiemerling; C.
Schmidt; D. Bryan; E. Marocco; V. Gurbani; R. Even; H. Zhang; D.
Zhang; J. Lei; Y.Gu; H.Song; X.Jiang; J.Seedorf; D.Saumitra;
A.Rahman; L.Deng; J.Pouwelse; A.Bakker and W.Eddy.
This document was prepared using 2-Word-v2.0.template.dot.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 24]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
10. Informative References
[Cisco] Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology,
2009-2014,
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/
ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html
[VoD] Yan Huang et al, Challenges,"Design and Analysis of a Large-
scale P2P-VoD System", Sigcomm08.
[Mobile Streaming1] Streaming to Mobile Users in a Peer-to-Peer
Network, Jeonghun Noh et al, MOBIMEDIA '09.
[Mobile Streaming2] J.Peltotaloet al.,"A real-time Peer-to-Peer
streaming system for mobile networking environment",in
Proceedings of the INFOCOM and Workshop on Mobile Video
Delivery (MoVID '09), April 2009.
[I-D.ietf-alto-protocol]Alimi, R., Penno, R., and Y. Yang, "ALTO
Protocol", draft-ietf-alto-protocol-10 (work in progress),
October 2011.
[Hybrid CDN P2P]D. Xu, S. Kulkarni, C. Rosenberg, and H. Chai,
"Analysis of a CDN-P2P hybrid architecture for cost-
effective streaming media distribution," Springer
Multimedia Systems, vol.11, no.4, pp.383-399, 2006.
[I-D.ietf-ppsp-survey]Gu, Y., Zong, N., Zhang, H., Zhang, Y., Lei, J.,
Camarillo, G., Liu, Y., Montuno, D., and X. Lei, "Survey
of P2P Streaming Applications", draft-ietf-ppsp-survey-02
(work in progress), July 2011.
[I-D.ietf-ppsp-peer-protocol] A. Bakker, R. Petrocco, Peer-to-Peer
Streaming Peer Protocol (PPSPP),draft-ietf-ppsp-peer-protocol-02,
(work in progress), June 2012.
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 25]
Internet-DraftProblem Statement and Requirements of PPSP June 2012
Authors' Addresses
Yunfei Zhang
China Mobile Communication Corporation
zhangyunfei@chinamobile.com
Ning Zong
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
zongning@huawei.com
zhang Expires December 28, 2012 [Page 26]