Private & Confidential

PPLive
—A Practical P2P Live System with Huge Amount of Users

Gale Huang
P2P Software Architect
galehuang@synacast.com
Shanghai Synacast Media-Tech Corp.
Sept. 2007
 Private & Confidential

Agenda

What is PPLive?
– An online video broadcasting and advertising network
– An efficient P2P technique platform and test bench in the world
Common & Special characters
Continuous self-adjustment procedure
Key points PPLive most concerns for
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1. What is PPLive?
 Introduction of PPLive
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What is PPLive?
– An online video broadcasting and advertising network
Provides an online viewing experience comparable to that of traditional TV broadcasting
75 million global installed base and 20 million monthly active users
600+ channels on PPLive with content ranging from news, music, sports, movies, games, live
video and other interactive services to a global audience
– An efficient P2P technique platform and test bench

History of PPLive:
Bill’s story
– Inventor of PPLive core technology
– Dropped out of post-graduate program to start PPLive in dorm and grew the user
significantly in the first two years.

Estimated global installed base 75 million

Monthly active users* 20 million
Daily active users 3.5 million
Peak concurrent users 2.2 million
Monthly average concurrent users 1.5 million
Weekly average usage time 11 hours
 Industry Trends
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PPLive is well positioned to exploit the next explosive growth

Advanced Video Streaming

PPLive
Applications

VOIP
Skype

Downloading
BitTorrent
File Sharing
Basic Napster
Applications

2001 2003 2004 2005

 Introduction of PPLive ——Focus on P2P Streaming
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Encoding &
Decoding Streaming technology
MPEG-4
H.264

P2P Download
P2P file share Accelerator
P2P Streaming P2P-Voip P2P-Magzine

Napster/ Kazza Bit Torrent/ Thunder Skype xPlus/ ZCom/

eMule/ Poco Dudu Accelerate
PPLive Headcall Poco MagBox

P2P technology Digital Rights

DRM
Digital Watermark
 Introduction of PPLive——distribution view
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PPLive is a P2P Live System

– Media Publish System
– P2P content delivery network
– End users’ PPLive player
– Multi-media formats Supported
– DRM Supported

Movie Online Show

Entertainment Sports
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Common and Different Characters

 Common characters
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Common points
– what topology of p2p architecture to be chosen
Tree based (multi-tree based)
Mesh based
Unstructured
Other DHT based…
– How to organize peer nodes?
– How to make peer nodes know and communicate with each other ?
Find the partners
Make use of the partners
– How to manage the resource?
– Most concern about the metric of the P2P System
 Different points
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Most different points

– Viewing experiences is the most important metric
– Much more practical
– Feedback from the PPLive test bench itself
75m end users
Consider their viewing experience
Take responsibility of all users
Part of users have updated version which is under control ,
before spreading to all of users

Ideas
PPLive test bench Feedback

Theory
Improvement
Feedback network—— Test network Feedback ( Global)
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 PPLive software Architecture
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Classical C/S or P2P
Source Server Adapter Server Network

Acess Server Server

One Channel, One P2P Group

SN SN
SN One P2P Group, One P2P Strategy
SN Overlay Network

SN SN

Smart routing Algorithm

SNList
PeerList SSN VSN
C

C C
SNCandadite PPLive has centralized servers taking charge of
Resourse List
SNList C C registering, providing the source and bridging with
PeerList other applications
DHT based Super Node consists of stable SN and
Global Distribution virtual SN
Each SN takes charge some Channels in Live system ;
while in VOD system, each SN takes charge of a
certain area
In each P2P group , we can assign a special p2p
algorithm different with other groups
 Peer node architecture
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Live Streaming VOD File Sharing File Storage

APP
Media Service Storage Service

Resource Management
P2P
P2P
File Management
Route Management Data Transmission
TCP/UDP/Control Net
Disk Driver
IP

PPLive Peer node architecture

Peer node
– Key point of the whole P2P System
– Implementer of the smart routing algorithm
– Hierarchical design
– A unified interface provided to the high level
applications
 PPLive Software Architecture
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server
C C

Public Network
SN
C Peer
SN
Peer
C Peer
SN Peer
SN
Peer
C
C
Peer
C Peer
C Peer
C
Peer
Peer

Network layer view Peer

Peer
Peer

Peer

Peer
Peer

Peer Peer
Peer

Peer
Peer
Peer Peer
Peer

Peer Peer
Peer

P2P layer view Global view

 PPLive Common Overlay
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A Common overlay network contains Live Streaming VOD File Sharing File Storage
– Query queue(P2P orders) Media Service Storage Service
Application related Resource Management
– Real streaming
P2P
– VOD File Management
Route Management Data Transmission
– File sharing
TCP/UDP/Control
– Download from the query queue (How to Disk Driver
IP
execute the orders)
Application independent
Ability of uploading and downloading

Query Queue Ping-pong layer

R1 PP1 ** R4 R7 R10 ...

R2 PP2 **** R1 R3 R6 ...

R3 PP3 *** R2 R5 R8 ...

R4 PP4* R9 R16 ...

R5 ...
R1：QueryQueue
R6
PP1*：pingpong
... layer（*represents
capacity）
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Continuous self-adjustment procedure

 Continuous self-adjustment
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1st Misunderstanding
– For most P2P System, it is Unit: Thousands
2500
commonly thought: The more 2200

users look simultaneously the 2000

1800

better view experience the users 1100

will have. 1500

Conclusion 1000
650

450
– For most p2p system, especially
500
for streaming applications 250
150
(bandwidth wasted and real
70
0
time requested application ), it is Jun 2005 Dec
2005
Mar 2006 Jun 2006 Sep
2006
Dec
2006
Mar 2007 Jun 2007

not necessarily the truth.

– User scale greatly influences the
architecture;
•Initial PPLive core with • Chord based DHT is • Smart SN introduced to
Single Global Index used for all Index Servers corporate with peers

• Unified p2p platform

• Distributed Index
• Gossip based Peer proposed to support
Server supported multi-applications
communication mingled with DHT

Nov. 2004 May 2005 Oct. 2006 Dec. 2006 May. 2007 Jun. 2007
 Private & Confidential
2nd Misunderstanding
– Theoretical model can lead to the real performance evaluation
Conclusion
– Modeling the system has a big help to design and optimize the P2P application
– P2P System’s capacity can just be proved by the fact of real operation
Over 250K peak simultaneous users to watch the “Super Girl” Live, China,
Q3 ， 2005

• 1 PC server
• 10Mb distribution bandwidth
• 500kbps video
• 250,000 audiences
• 50,000 audiences from abroad

Source: PPLive database A NBA play-off game with Huston Rocket, Live, China,
Q2,2007

• 1 PC server
• 10Mb distribution bandwidth
• 400kbps video
• 1,480,000 audiences

Source: PPLive database

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3rd Misunderstanding
– Experimental environment can represent the real network environment.
Conclusion
– PPLive was also born from the CERNET, which is specially for educational use
and very idealistic for P2P experiment
– PPLive encountered many difficulties while walking out from CERNET
Heterogeneous network
Unpredictable user pattern
Asymmetric network
Poor network condition, half of them are 512kbps bandwidth, while we run 400kbps
video on it
– Stronger and smarter algorithm should be used
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Key points PPLive most concerns for

 PPLive Platform Strategy
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Content Provider Advertiser Services Provider End Users

Distributed
Live System VOD System File Sharing Others…
Storage

P2P Content Deliver Network

Broadband Network Infrastructure

 Continuous self-adjustment (cont)
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Deeply improve the users’ viewing experience

– Based on the P2P streaming technology
– Adapting for Chinese complicated network environment
Integrate the multi high level applications into this platform
Open the part of the platform interface to public
– Let others join in this platform
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PPLive—P2P changes our lives

Thank you!

Question Time