Cooperation Among Members of Online Communities

Today some of the most popular and successful applications over the Internet are based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) solutions. Online Social Networks (OSN) represent a stunning phenomenon too, involving communities of unprecedented size, whose members organize their relationships on the basis of social or professional friendship. This work deals with a P2P video streaming platform and focuses on the performance improvements that can be granted to those P2P nodes that are also members of a social network. The underpinning idea is that OSN friends (and friends of friends) might be more willing to help their mates than complete strangers in fetching the desired content within the P2P overlay. Hence, an approach is devised to guarantee that P2P users belonging to an OSN are guaranteed a better service when critical conditions build up, i.e., when bandwidth availability is scarce. Different help strategies are proposed, and their improvements are numerically assessed, showing that the help of direct friends, two-hops away friends and, in the limit, of the entire OSN community brings in considerable advantages. The obtained results demonstrate that the amount of delivered video increases and the delay notably decreases, for those privileged peers that leverage their OSN membership within the P2P overlay.</jats:p

Cooperation Among Members of Online Communities: Profitable Mechanisms to Better Distribute Near-Real-Time Services

In recent years, classical Internet applications have been accompanied by the surging of a greatvariety of new services and exciting possibilities. Among such broad range, two particular phenomenaare highly successful: Online Social Networks (OSNs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services.This paper merges these distinct worlds, via the proposal of a P2P streaming system that takesadvantage of the friendship relationships of an underlying OSN, to better distribute videos among theoverlay peers that are also friends within the OSN. A category of privileged users is therefore created,that is guaranteed a satisfying viewing experience when the P2P overlay operates in critical conditions,i.e, when bandwidth availability is scarce. We show that the help of direct friends, two-hops awayfriends and, in the limit, of the entire OSN community brings in considerable advantages to the peersthat are OSN members. In particular:- the number of those among them that are able to download the entire video significantly increases;- the number of video portions they can obtain consistently raises;- as desired, when the P2P system is operating in underloaded conditions, a proper functioning isguaranteed to all of its nodes, regardless of their being members of the OSN or plain P2P users

Taking Advantage of Social Network Relationships in P2P Streaming Overlays

Abstract-In recent years, classical Internet applications have been accompanied by the surging of a great variety of new services and exciting possibilities. Among such broad range, two particular phenomena are highly successful: Online Social Networks (OSNs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services. This paper merges these distinct worlds, via the proposal of a P2P streaming system that takes advantage of the friendship relationships of an underlying OSN, to better distribute videos among the overlay peers that are also friends within the OSN. A category of privileged users is therefore created, that is guaranteed a satisfying viewing experience when the P2P overlay operates in critical conditions, i.e, when bandwidth availability is scarce. We show that the help of direct friends, two-hops away friends and, in the limit, of the entire OSN community brings in considerable advantages to the peers that are OSN members. In particular: the number of those among them that are able to download the entire video significantly increases; the number of video portions they can obtain consistently raises; as desired, when the P2P system is operating in underloaded conditions, a proper functioning is guaranteed to all of its nodes, regardless of their being members of the OSN or plain P2P users

Taking Advantage of Social Network Relationships in P2P Streaming Overlays

In recent years, classical Internet applications have been accompanied by the surging of a great variety of new services and exciting possibilities. Among such broad range, two particular phenomena are highly successful: Online Social Networks (OSNs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services. This paper merges these distinct worlds, via the proposal of a P2P streaming system that takes advantage of the friendship relationships of an underlying OSN, to better distribute videos among the overlay peers that are also friends within the OSN. A category of privileged users is therefore created, that is guaranteed a satisfying viewing experience when the P2P overlay operates in critical conditions, i.e, when bandwidth availability is scarce. We show that the help of direct friends, two-hops away friends and, in the limit, of the entire OSN community brings in considerable advantages to the peers that are OSN members. In particular: the number of those among them that are able to download the entire video significantly increases; the number of video portions they can obtain consistently raises; as desired, when the P2P system is operating in underloaded conditions, a proper functioning is guaranteed to all of its nodes, regardless of their being members of the OSN or plain P2P users