Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#1

Post by sreeix » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 7:37 PM UTC

Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.
swirl-project.org

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#2

Post by streptomycin » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

The most common use of p2p streaming today is pirating live sporting events. Will there be any problems with using Swirl for that purpose?

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#3

Post by scrym » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #2

The most common use of p2p streaming today is pirating live sporting events. Will there be any problems with using Swirl for that purpose?

What's the difference with a mobile peercast ?

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#4

Post by toggle » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

This is exciting -- the only similar thing I'm aware of is BitTorrent Live. Seems like the same idea, except I'm pretty sure they have no intention of making BitTorrent Live open source. (The protocol is patented[0], even.) Seems like they've stopped developing it, too.

[0] http://www.scribd.com/doc/132418122/bittorrent-live-patent

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#5

Post by rdtsc » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

Looks interesting.

Erlang VM (BEAM) is a good choice for this.

It is also a hard problem.

I copied a short description of the protocol from their GitHub overview doc:

https://github.com/skunkwerks/swirl/blob/feature/docs/doc/ov...

---

PPSP is a transport protocol — it transfers a stream of opaque binary data from one location to another. It is unique amongst transport protocols as it is a many-to-many transfer protocol, that is, there is no single master server or endpoint that manages the data transfer.

A swarm is a set of peers that are sharing (receiving and/or transferring) the same data, as a set of small chunks, which is identified by a unique cryptographic recursive hash of the data, called the Root Hash.

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Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#6

Post by Jxnathan » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

Is this like StreamNation or Put.io?

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#7

Post by jbk » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

With VLC, we've looked at various P2P video streaming technologies, like Tribler, Goalbit or Peercast. But so far, nothing actually worked correctly...

If something standard (or close enough) actually emerges, and is not insane to integrate, this would change a lot of things :)

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#8

Post by jsonified » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:12 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #2

The most common use of p2p streaming today is pirating live sporting events. Will there be any problems with using Swirl for that purpose?

Hi, I'm the author of swirl, such as it is. In principle there's nothing stopping you from streaming anything with PPSPP. The current erlang implementation could run on an android tablet for example. And if you had a pcell nearby http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/20/steve-perlman-pcell-is-rea... then b/w really wouldn't be a constraint.

There's a fair bit of work remaining, in particular browser/client support is something I've not even considered, it's not my speciality.

I'm sure VLC and Firefox etc would be awesome clients, but one step at a time.

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#9

Post by yairharel » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:13 PM UTC

We've built a fully functional peering solution at Kontiki and have millions of users (all on corporate networks). If you're interested in that sort of stuff come join us - we're hiring.

http://www.kontiki.com/products/enterprise-content-delivery-...

Re: Bringing Peer-to-Peer Streaming to the World.

#10

Post by jsonified » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:15 PM UTC

Hey, I'm the lead developer of swirl project. I'd like to add that I wouldn't be working on this today without the support of NLNet who has provided a grant that allows me to work on swirl full time atm: http://nlnet.nl/project/swirl/ Huge props.