Patent ID: 8356111

Claim:
A buffer for buffing multimedia content to enable reliable streaming of multimedia content in a real-time peer-to-peer network, comprising: a first section being loaded with a first portion of the multimedia content during a first time interval, wherein the first portion of the multimedia content is retrieved from at least one resource node, wherein the at least one resource node is a node in the real-time peer-to-peer network that has an available upload bandwidth that can be contributed to a channel swarm; and a second section being loaded with a second portion of the multimedia content during a second time interval, wherein the second portion of the multimedia content is retrieved from at least one reliable node during a second time interval, wherein the buffer continuously delivers the multimedia content including the first and second portions thereof to a consumer node, wherein the at least one reliable node receives the multimedia content directly from a broadcaster and is guaranteed to provide the multimedia content to at least the consumer node connected thereto, wherein the consumer node, the least one resource node and the at least one reliable node constitute the channel-swarm of a particular broadcast television channel in the real-time peer-to-peer network.