A Class of Optimal Stable P2P-Topologies for Multimedia-Streaming

Abstract — Using a P2P approach for live multimedia streaming applications in general offers the promise to obtain a highly scalable, decentral and robust distribution service. When constructing the streaming topologies, however, specific care has to be taken in order to ensure that quality of service requirements in terms of delay, jitter, packet-loss and robustness against deliberate denial of service attacks are met. In this paper we concentrate on the latter requirement of robustness against denial of service attacks. We present an analytical model to assess the stability of overlay streaming topologies and to describe attack strategies. Building on this, we describe a class of topologies which are optimal stable against greedy attacks under certain conditions, and give a mathematical proof for this result. The construction and analysis of these topologies lead us to strategies to build very resilient topologies, even when these conditions cannot be met. I