This document provides an overview of the ACM workshop on advanced video streaming techniques for peer-to-peer networks and social networking. It summarizes the topics of interest for the workshop, which included innovative P2P video streaming solutions, social media content distribution, and advanced video coding techniques for real-time applications. It also summarizes the 15 papers accepted to the workshop, which covered topics like multi-source video distribution, modeling end-to-end delay, and improvements to quality of experience for multiple description video transmission. An invited talk was also given by a representative from the BBC on audio/visual content delivery over P2P networks.

1. ACM Workshop on
Advanced Video Streaming Techniques for
Peer-to-Peer Networks and Social Networking
Gabriella Olmo
Politecnico di Torino
C.so Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
10129 Torino, Italy
+39(0)11 564 4094
gabriella.olmo@polito.it
Christian Timmerer
Klagenfurt University
Universitätstraße 65-67
A-9020 Klagenfurt
+43(0)463 2700 3621
christian.timmerer@itec.uni-
klu.ac.at
Pascal Frossard
EPFL
FSTI-IEL-LTS4 Station 11
CH-1015 Lausanne
+41(0)21 693 5655
pascal.frossard@epfl.ch
Keith Mitchell
Lancaster University
InfoLab21 South Drive
Lancaster LA1 4WA, UK
+44 (0)1524 510110
k.mitchell@lancaster.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
This paper provides a summary and overview of the ACM
workshop on advanced video streaming techniques for peer-to-
peer networks and social networking.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.0 [Information Systems]: General.
General Terms
Algorithms, Measurement, Performance, Design,
Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization.
Keywords
Video Streaming, Peer-to-Peer, Social Networking.
1. INTRODUCTION
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a promising technology for video streaming,
and offers advantages in terms of robustness, re-configurability
and scalability. From the point of view of the broadcaster, the P2P
approach permits to serve a larger audience without the need of
proportionally increased resources. From a users’ point of view,
P2P should allow each user to experience high quality video in a
cost effective fashion. Moreover, users themselves can act as
prosumers by distributing their own content within social
networks enabling heterogeneous users to distribute real time,
TV-quality video streaming on P2P overlays.
In this context, social networks and social services are emerging
as a potential new driver for content delivery networks.
Specifically, social networks potentially provide a new level of
understanding and knowledge related to the interaction between
people within a virtual space. Many emerging multimedia based
services and applications have started to exploit the ‘social graph’
in new ways for establishing a basis for social recommendations,
filtering etc.). As yet, one unexplored area of research relates to
the exploiting the social graph for informing adaptive behaviour
in P2P-based multimedia systems.
On the other hand, the P2P video technology is still challenging,
due to the need of reducing start-time and churn-induced
instability, to the asymmetry of residential broadband
connections, and to high packet loss rates due to router congestion
and transmission errors on the physical network, node departure
from the P2P overlay, strict timing out due to real time
visualization. The lack of guarantee about the actual delivery of
the data may cause drops in the reproduction quality and service
outages. Moreover, we expect for the near future an increasing
demand for mobility and ubiquitous access to the Internet. Users
will join the service using terminals with different resolutions and
bandwidth, and diverse, possibly wireless access technologies.
The use of low power terminals pose stringent challenges also in
terms of computational complexity of the algorithms to be run for
data coding. In this scenario specific video coding strategies could
play an important role. At present the coding algorithms used in
the state of the art video P2P networks are based on solutions
optimized for different application scenarios. This could be a limit
for realizing very efficient P2P video streaming applications.
2. TOPICS OF INTEREST
This workshop [1] solicited novel contributions and breaking
results on all aspects of P2P-based video coding, streaming, and
content distribution which is informed by social networks. In
particular, workshop papers should describe algorithms, issues
and experiences related to P2P video streaming and social
networks taking into account recent advances on multimedia
coding such as scalability, resilience, cross layer optimization,
network coding as well as its distribution and interaction. We are
particularly interested in (but not limited to) areas such as:
— Innovative P2P-based video streaming solutions;
— P2P-based social media content distribution networks;
— Advanced video coding techniques for real-time P2P
applications: layered/scalable video coding, multiple
description coding, distributed source coding;
— Identification and design of proper metrics for performance
evaluation and monitoring including Quality of Experience;
— Content and context analysis and modelling for P2P-based
social media distribution;
— Filtering and recommendation systems;
— Error-resilience tools for peer-to-peer multimedia services;
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
MM’10, October 25–29, 2010, Firenze, Italy.
ACM 978-1-60558-933-6/10/10.

2. — Rate control and bandwidth adaptation for both single
streams and multiple stream multiplexing;
— Cross layer optimization issues;
— Protocols for peer-to-peer multimedia services;
— P2P streaming prototype implementation for both live and
on-demand streaming;
— Advertisement, payment, and cashing systems;
— Applications, standards, and practical deployments;
3. SUMMARY OF SUBMISSIONS
The call for papers attracted 30 submissions (two redirected from
the main conference) from Australia, Asia, Canada, Europe, and
the United States of America. The program committee accepted
15 papers covering a variety of topics, all in the context of P2P:
— Multi-source video distribution;
— Modeling end-to-end delay;
— Piece-picking for layered/scalable content;
— Prefetching and upload strategies;
— QoE improvements for multiple description video
transmission;
— Cache optimization;
— Network coding improving packet jitter;
— Analytical approach to model adaptive video streaming;
— Access control to BitTorrent swarms;
— Group communication with layer-aware FEC;
— Streaming with LT codes;
— Design and evaluation of an optimized overlay topology;
— APIs and library;
Furthermore, George Wright (Head of Prototyping, BBC
Research and Development) provides an invited talk entitled
“Audio/visual content and metadata delivered over the open
Internet using P2P-Next: some experiences from a broadcaster's
perspective”.
As workshop chairs, we would like to thank all people who have
contributed to the success of this workshop: the authors, the
invited speaker, the program committee members and all
reviewers, and the members of the organizing committee of ACM
Multimedia 2010. The support of the workshop sponsors is also
greatly acknowledged, in particular RADVISION
(http://www.radvision.com/) for sponsoring the best paper award.
We sincerely hope that the carefully crafted technical program we
have arranged for, the scientific discussions that the workshop
will hopefully stimulate, and your additional activities in
Florence, will make your participation worthwhile and a
memorable experience.
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The workshop is partly sponsored by the project “ARACHNE:
Advanced video streaming techniques for peer-to-peer networks,”
funded by the Italian Ministry for Education and Research
(http://www.diegm.uniud.it/arachne), and partly by the EC-funded
“P2P-Next” project (http://www.p2p-next.org).
5. REFERENCES
[1] http://www.p2pstreaming.eu/ (last access: July 2010).