Patent ID: 9591070
Date: 2017-03-07
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method at a tracker device, comprising a processing unit and a non-transitory computer readable medium, of arranging peer devices in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network comprising a streaming source and network peer devices arranged at distribution levels in the P2P network, wherein network peer devices at distribution levels closer to the streaming source have lower latencies than network peer devices at distribution levels farther from the streaming source, the method comprising: receiving, by the processing unit of the tracker device, a request from a peer device entering the network to receive data content; determining, by the processing unit of the tracker device, a distribution level in the P2P network at which the entering peer device is to be arranged with respect to the streaming source by sampling a distribution level from a conditional probability distribution, stored in the non-transitory computer readable medium, of distribution level and upload capacity for the network peer devices; arranging, by the processing unit of the tracker device, the entering peer at the determined distribution level in the P2P network; and providing, by the processing unit of the tracker device, the entering peer device with a plurality of peer devices selected, by the processing unit of the tracker device, from the network peer devices from which the requested data content can be downloaded with an expected probability depending on the determined distribution level, wherein the entering peer device is enabled to download, with the expected probability, the requested data content from a selected one of said plurality of peer devices, at a bandwidth corresponding to the upload capacity of said selected peer device, and in case the requested data content cannot be downloaded from said selected peer device, the entering peer device is enabled to download the requested data content from another selected peer device of the plurality of peer devices with another expected probability, at a bandwidth corresponding to the upload capacity of said another selected peer device.