P2P IPTV Measurement: A Comparison Study

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of P2P IPTV applications by measuring network traffic, peer churn, and user behavior during major events, filling a gap in understanding their network impact and operational mechanisms.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed comparison of P2P IPTV traffic, peer dynamics, and user behavior, highlighting differences among popular applications and their potential network effects.

Findings

Traffic patterns vary significantly among applications

Peer churn rates are high during live events

User engagement behaviors differ across platforms

Abstract

With the success of P2P file sharing, new emerging P2P applications arise on the Internet for streaming content like voice (VoIP) or live video (IPTV). Nowadays, there are lots of works measuring P2P file sharing or P2P telephony systems, but there is still no comprehensive study about P2P IPTV, whereas it should be massively used in the future. During the last FIFA world cup, we measured network traffic generated by P2P IPTV applications like PPlive, PPstream, TVants and Sopcast. In this paper we analyze some of our results during the same games for the applications. We focus on traffic statistics and churn of peers within these P2P networks. Our objectives are threefold: we point out the traffic generated to understand the impact they will have on the network, we try to infer the mechanisms of such applications and highlight differences, and we give some insights about the users' behavior.