Patent ID: 8326992

Claim:
A method for controlling the provision of resource nodes for streaming multimedia content of a channel viewed by consumer nodes in a peer-to-peer network wherein each consumer node is at least a computing device, comprising: initializing the channel with at least an initial number of resource nodes allocated to provide a desired level of quality of service (QoS) to the consumer nodes, the resource nodes and the consumer nodes are part of the peer-to-peer network; checking periodically a number of consumer nodes currently connected to the channel and an experienced level of QoS of the channel; predicting, based on the number of the consumer nodes currently connected, an increase trend or a decrease trend in the number of consumer nodes, and the experienced level of QoS level, a number of predicted consumer nodes of the channel and a predicted number of resource nodes required to provide the desired level of QoS; changing the number of resource nodes allocated to the channel to provide the desired level of QoS and to meet the predicted number of consumer nodes; and changing the number of allocated resource nodes when a predicted level of QoS for the predicted number of consumer nodes is outside of a predefined QoS range, wherein changing the number of allocated resource nodes includes any one of: allocating additional resource nodes to the channel if the predicted number of consumer nodes is higher than the number of consumer nodes currently connected or the predicted level of QoS is below a predefined minimum level of QoS; and deallocating resource nodes from the channel when the number of predicted consumer nodes is less than the number of consumer nodes currently connected to the channel or the predicted level of QoS is above a predefined maximum level of QoS.