Patent ID: 7587508

Claim:
A method for providing receiver-driven streaming of an item of content in a peer-to-peer network, the peer-to-peer network comprising a receiver peer node and a plurality of transmitter peer nodes, the method comprising: providing, at the receiver peer node, a plurality of input managers, wherein each of the plurality of input managers uses a connection to a corresponding one of the plurality of transmitter peer nodes; sending, from the plurality of input managers, one or more requests for at least a part of the item of content to the plurality of transmitter peer nodes in the network; receiving, in response to the one or more requests, one or more data packages corresponding to at least a part of the item of content at a first input manager of the plurality of input managers; receiving, in response to the one or more requests, one or more data packages corresponding to at least another part of the item of content at a second input manager of the plurality of input managers; and making, at the receiver peer node, incoming content received by at least the first and second input managers, ready for processing and play-back at the receiver peer node, including managing, at the receiver peer node, the data packages received from at least the first transmitter peer node and the second transmitter peer node, so that part of the item of content is streamed to a stream target at the receiver peer node while another part of the item of content is being received by the receiver peer node.