2018 International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT)
Performance Comparison of Chunk and Peer Scheduling Algorithms of Peer-to-Peer
Streaming Systems
Syed Saddam Hussain Shah, Naina Said1, Aysha Nayab, Waleed Khan, Zaryab Ali Shinwari, M. Jawad, Nasru Minallah
Department of Computer Systems Engineering (DCSE),
University of Engineering and Technology (UET)
Peshawar, Pakistan
1
Naina_dcse@yahoo.com
Abstract— With increasing popularity of Peer to Peer systems for
video streaming, it is important that the expectations of the users
regarding the quality of such systems are being met. In a P2P
system, the media stream is divided into small data units known
as chunks. Each peer in a Peer to Peer (P2P) system has to take
two important decisions at a given time. First, which chunks are
to be shared and second with which peer. This paper compares
the performance of different combinations of chunk/peer
schedulers in terms of chunk diffusion delay, average chunk
distribution delay and max chunk distribution delay. By doing so,
the best possible combination of the two schedulers for the given
experimental setup is explored. The results obtained under the
specified experimental setup show that when chunk scheduling
algorithm Deadline Based Chunk Scheduler (DLc) is combined
with different peer scheduling algorithms, the best results are
obtained by its combination with Chunk Earliest Free Pair
Scheduler (CEFp). For a constant peer scheduler CEFp
combined with different chunk schedulers, the best results are
obtained by combining it with Latest Blind Chunk Scheduler
(LBc). Finally, with varying neighborhood size, the best results
are obtained by the combination of DLC and Chunk Almost Free
Peer Scheduler (CAFp).
Keywords— Peer to Peer systems; Chunk Scheduler; Peer
Scheduler ; flexibility ; scalability; performance ; SSSim
I. INTRODUCTION
The increasing growth of the video based services puts a high
demand on the service providers to take into account the
quality expectations of the end users. In most researches, the
researchers were more concerned to increase the perpetual
quality for the user by carefully selecting the Quality of
Service (QOS) parameters. Some of these parameters were
video compression optimization and network bandwidth
allocation. Even though optimizing and controlling the QOS
parameters of a video transmission system is crucial for the
increasing its performance, an even more important factor is to
evaluate the quality of the video from users perspective. This
type of evaluation is called Quality of Experience (QOE) of a
video streaming system. However, QOE based assessment of a
video is difficult because the user experience is subjective and
usually hard to quantify and measure.
One of the major challenge in P2P based video streaming
system is the scheduling strategy in a mesh based system
which due to their robustness and resilience are the most
widely used. Video streams in P2P based systems are split into
small units known as chunks. Scheduling refers to the decision
that at a given point, which chunk would be sent to which
978-1-5386-9355-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 361
DOI 10.1109/FIT.2018.00070
peer. Scheduling is one of the most important performance
parameter for the evaluation of a P2P based system because,
1. It is among the main drivers of the performance of
system.
2. The networking resources required for these systems
is large so efficiency is crucial and of great
importance.
3. Because of a topology of dynamic nature and tight
deadlines of the real time systems, robust and
performing solutions are difficult to find.
The purpose of implementing P2P streaming is to have
scalability and as well as at the same time meet real-time
playback requirements [1]. Some other serious challenges
include long transmission delays as well as the poor quality of
service [2]. Mesh pull algorithm is seen as one of the
promising solutions for peer to peer chunk scheduling by some
of the researchers [3,4]. Another popular method is the
differentiated chunk scheduling [1]. While Luca Abeni et al.,
[5] discuss various combinations of peer and chunk scheduling
methods, commenting that most methods are not robust
enough to fulfill the needs of changing conditions. Proposing
their own scheduling combination for heterogeneous
distribution of peers with fixed bandwidth, to achieve
robustness [6]. Yipeng, [7] proposes a simple stochastic model
to analyze tradeoffs among buffer size, playback continuity
and the supported peer population. The authors in [3,4] study
the scheduling problem of pull based Peer to Peer streaming
application and consider the problem as an assignment
problem. Thus in order to optimize the throughput and
delivery of the system, they propose ArcShed, a new
scheduling algorithm for layered video streaming. Similarly,
they also propose NAasched for non-layered video streaming
[8]. The purpose of the proposed scheduling algorithm is to
send request for the missing chunks in the sliding window of
the receiver in an optimal fashion. This optimality concerned
the fact that the higher priority chunks are ordered first
whereas the lower ones afterwards while taking full benefit of
the networks capacity [9]. In the next sections we discuss
effects of scheduling on performance of P2P systems followed
by system model in section III, while experimental setup is
explained in section IV and section V includes the conclusion
of this paper.
 II. EFFECTS OF SCHEDULING ON PERFORMANCE OF P2P
SYSTEM
Unstructured P2P system can be modeled as a set S= {P 1,
P2,……,PN) of N peers Pi . The aim of all these peers is
receiving a media stream from the source peer. The media is
divided into small units Mc chunks. Each peer in the system
receives chunk Cj from other peers and then sends the chunks
out at a rate of S(Pi).
For P2P system, the content retrieval mechanism is
responsible to allow the user to receive these data chunks from
other nodes by using the constructed overlay. This process
plays a very important role in the streaming and has an effect
on the global performance of the system. Usually, there are
two types of mechanism that are used for this process, push
and pull based retrieval. Push method is used in Tree-based
systems, in which the parent peer push the data or media
content to the entire child nodes. As there is no specific
organization of peer in mesh-based systems, any peer can
blindly pushes the contents it has to the neighbor peers. A peer
may receive the same chunk more than once from multiple
peers which can result in redundancy. This problem is avoided
by using Pull Method in mesh-based systems. In pull
mechanism, the peers pull the requested media content from
other peers. All the peers maintain buffer maps which contain
information about the chunks a peer has. Peers exchange
buffer maps with each other. In case of a meshed based
system, the way in which overlay is constructed satisfy some
quality measures of the system. Some of these measures
include increasing throughput and adding resilience and
robustness to the system. However, it does not impose how the
overlay should be used. For instance, a particular node may
have parent’s node having a very high upload bandwidth, but
if they do not have suitable contents to send (chunks in this
case), the throughput that is obtained would be lower than
what is expected or receiver nodes will receive useless
content. In another scenario where node is always requesting
chunks from a particular parent, it will be more prone to
failure if that parent departs. This will highly degrade the
quality of the video received. This implies the need for proper
scheduling techniques which dictate which data has to be
offered/requested from which peer. Once the overlay has been
built, the next step is the scheduling decisions. The receiver
node exchange information about the available data chunks
and also assign the task of assigning every neighbor a chunk.
For a P2P system to be efficient, the scheduling algorithm
must take full advantage of the available bandwidth while
taking into consideration the availability of particular chunks
in the neighborhood [9].
While streaming, chunks that need to be sent or received and
the peers with which such exchange is required are selected by
peers and chunks scheduler. Scheduling decisions depend on
the chunk trading protocols of the application. In Epidemic
approach the chunks are periodically sent to neighbors.
Therefore it requires the chunk scheduler for selection of
chunk to be sent and the peer scheduler for the selection of the
target peers [10]. Given an X chunk scheduler and Y peer
Scheduler, applying X first and Y afterwards is known as
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chunk first scheduling while applying Y first and X afterwards
is called peer first scheduling [11]. In mesh pull systems, each
chunk of media has a corresponding playback deadline.
Therefore, the timely delivery of the chunks requires proper
video scheduling. Scheduling the transfer of information is
one of the most important functions which affect the
performance of P2P system. First, the peers need to share the
information about their current status of the chunk buffer so
that the scheduling can be enabled. This is a requirement for
an unstructured topology (mesh) because in such system, the
stream does not strictly follow the overlay topology, such
information is shared by the help of scheduling messages
which have already been discussed in the previous section.
Regardless of the scheduling strategy that is being used, the
core function of the scheduler is to select the chunks for
trading and the peer that would act as a target. In the context
of video streaming, scheduling is complicated because the
chunks which are received after video playback deadline are
not played and are considered useless. An additional constraint
called the layer dependency should be taken in consideration
in case of layered video which makes the task even more
complicated. Therefore, in the layered video coding technique,
video gets encoded into a base layer as well as several
enhancement layers, where a higher layer can be only be
decoded if all related lower layers are available. This is called
the layers’ dependency.
The arguments made so far explains the importance of
scheduling techniques for improving the performance of P2P
system. For a P2P system to be efficient, optimal scheduling
techniques are needed to be employed. Figure 1 below shows
the example of optimal chunk scheduling as given in [6]. As
depicted in the figure 1, node 1 is the receiver node.
Therefore, it tries to request the missing chunks from the
nodes in its neighborhood 2, 3and 4.
Figure 1. Example of Optimal Chunk Scheduling [6]
 Chunks
1 2 3 4 5 for the theoretical point of view. This kind of system is
Nodes
2 1 1 1 0 1
3 0 0 0 1 1
4 1 0 0 1 0
Figure 2. Optimal Chunk scheduling for figure 1 (0 represents missing
chunk while 1 represents an available chunk) [6]
Each neighbor node has a buffer map to express its available
chunks. The numbers written over the arc represent the
amount of bandwidth that each node can give to the receiver
node in term of chunks per unit. Figure 2 shows the optimal
scheduling that is proposed for this particular example which
takes complete benefits of the available bandwidth. Chunk 1 is
requested from node 4, chunks 2 and 3 from node 2, while
chunks 4 and 5 are requested from node 3.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
For the selection of appropriate simulator for evaluation of the
scheduling algorithms [14]. We need to consider some of the
most important factors of the simulators in order to obtain
results that meet our requirement in reasonable time.
Following are some of the properties which have been
considered while selection of the simulator.
x Flexibility
A simulator must have flexibility to modify existing and
addition of new scheduling algorithms.
x Scalability
It should have scalability in terms of simulation properties.
One can simulate a particular system with its particular
properties.
x Performance
It should be efficient in terms of memory consumption and
execution time
Based on the all of the factors and properties that need to be
considered while selection of the simulator, we have selected
SSSim [10] (Simple and Scalable Simulator) based on our
requirements.
The system is modeled as a set S = {P1,…, PN} of N peers Pi,
plus a special node Ps called source. The source is not included
in S and generates the chunks at fixed rate λ. Each peer P i
receives a chunk Cj from other peers and then sends this chunk
out to other peers at a rate S(Pi). In addition, it is assumed that
all the peers have infinite download bandwidth and also
infinite upload bandwidth as the source. Although this
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situation might not seem very realistic, it is found to relevant
important to simulate when analyzing the performance of
different P2P scheduling algorithms. For this scenario, at time
t, a source generates a media chunk Cj and sends this chunk to
a peer. Every peer Pi also sends a chunk that it receives. Cj, to
peers Pk. All of these chunks are assumed to be received at
time t+1.
When a given peer receives a chunk Ch, it has to then select a
target peer Pj to which this chunk has to be sent. In addition,
the peer also has to select which chunk to send to other peers.
These type of decisions are taken by the peer scheduling and
the chunk scheduling algorithms implemented in the system.
For peer selection purposes, the target peers are not all the
peers from the set S but rather a small subset from S. This is
called the neighborhood of the peer Pi. For our simulation
setup, the size of neighborhood is indicated by D.
The selection of chunk and peer scheduling techniques highly
impact the performance of a P2P systems and therefore it is
valuable to evaluate the performance of different techniques
both in simulation as well as by analytical.
For the purpose of performance evaluation of P2P systems, we
applied different combination of chunk and peer schedulers
and the results are reported in terms of average distribution
delay, maximum distribution delay and average diffusion
delay. For all these experiments, the chunk size is kept
constant at 1024 bytes. In order to simulate the real time
scenario, we perform these experiments using raw data
thereby not restricting the type of dataset. In the first run, the
chunk scheduler is kept constant and different peer schedulers
are combined with it. The results are generated with respect to
increasing number of peers. The details of this run are given in
table 1.
TABLE I COMBINATION OF DEADLINE BASED CHUNK
SCHEDULER WITH DIFFERENT PEER SCHEDULERS AND OTHER
SYSTEM PARAMETERS (RUN 1)
No of Peers = From 20 to 1010 , Neighborhood =20, No of
Chunks=2000,Chunk Buffer =64
Chunk Peer Schedulers
Scheduler
Deadline based Chunk Free/Deadline Peer Scheduler (CFDp)
Chunk Chunk Earliest Free Peer Scheduler (CEFp)
Scheduler Chunk Most Deprived Peer Scheduler (CMDp)
(DLc) Chunk Useful Peer Scheduler (Cup)
Chunk Almost Free Peer Scheduler (CAFp)
For the second run, a single peer scheduler was selected and
then combined with different chunk schedulers with respect to
increasing number of peers. The results are obtained in terms
of average distribution delay, maximum distribution delay and
average diffusion delay. The details of this run are given in
table 2.
 TABLE 2 COMBINATION OF CHUNK EARLIEST FREE PEER
SCHEDULER WITH DIFFERENT CHUNK SCHEDULERS AND OTHER
SYSTEM PARAMETERS (RUN 2)
No of Peers = From 10 to 1010 , Neighborhood =20, No of
Chunks=2000,Chunk Buffer Size=64
Peer Scheduler Chunk Schedulers
Chunk Earliest Latest Utility Chunk Scheduler (Luc)
Free Peer Latest Blind Chunk Scheduler ( LBc)
Scheduler
(CEFp) Random Useful Chunk Scheduler (RUc)
Earliest Useful Chunk Scheduler (EUc)

For the third run, the number of peers were kept constant and
the neighborhood size is increased from 20 to 210 for all the Figure 3. Average chunk diffusion delays with respect to
Number of peers Deadline Based Chunk Scheduler
above mentioned combinations of chunk and peer schedulers.
The results are obtained in terms of average distribution delay,
maximum distribution delay and average diffusion delay. The
details of this run are given in table 3.

TABLE 3 COMBINATION OF DIFFERENT CHUNK/PEER

SCHEDULERS WITH VARYING NEIGHBORHOOD SIZE AND OTHER
SYSTEM PARAMETERS (RUN 3)
No of Peers = 1010 , Neighborhood =20 to 210, No of Chunks=2000,Chunk
Buffer Size=64
Constant Varying Schedulers
Scheduler
Chunk Earliest Latest Utility Chunk Scheduler (Luc)
Free Peer Latest Blind Chunk Scheduler ( LBc)
Scheduler Figure 4. Average chunk distribution delay with respect to number of peers
(CEFp) Random Useful Chunk Scheduler (RUc) through Deadline Based Chunk Scheduler
Earliest Useful Chunk Scheduler (EUc)
Deadline based Chunk Free/Deadline Peer Scheduler (CFDp)
Chunk Chunk Earliest Free Peer Scheduler (CEFp)
Scheduler
(DLc) Chunk Most Deprived Peer Scheduler (CMDp)
Chunk Useful Peer Scheduler (Cup)
Chunk Almost Free Peer Scheduler (CAFp)

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As stated earlier, the results for all the runs are reported in
terms of Average Chunk diffusion delay, Average Chunk
Distribution delay and Maximum Chunk Distribution Delay.
The upcoming sub-sections gives details about the obtained
results.
A. DLc Vs different Peer Schedulers
The graphs for the cases where chunk scheduler is kept
constant (Deadline based scheduler) and various peer
schedulers are tried in combination to it, are shown in figure 3,
4 and 5. The graphs below show the curves which were
obtained for these tests. As can be seen in the graphs, for
different number of peers, DLc combined with CEFp gives the
lowest values for all three matrices while Cup gives the
highest values. The rest of the schedulers show fluctuating
results for different number of peers.
Figure 5. Max chunk distribution delay with respect to number of peers
through Deadline Based Chunk Scheduler
As shown in the graphs, for the first run, the highest average
chunk distribution delay with increasing number of peers was
obtained by the combination of DLc/Cup and the lowest
values of this metric was observed by DLc/CEFp combination.
In case of average chunk distribution delay, DLc/LUp
combination yields high values constantly with increasing
number of peers whereas DLC/CEFp gives the lowest values.
The same trends are also observed for max chunk distribution
delay matric. Therefore, for the given parameters, the
combination of DLC/CEFp is recommended. This is because
DLc selects the chunks which lie within the deadline for those
peers who request the required chunks first. Therefore, all the
peers have the required chunks on time thus reducing the
overall delays in the system

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B. CEFp Vs different Chunk Schedulers
The graphs for the cases where peer scheduler is kept constant
CEFp and various chunk schedulers are tried in combination
to it, are shown in figure 6,7and 8. The graphs below show the
curves which were obtained for these tests. As can be seen in
the graphs, for different number of peers, CEFp combined
with LBc gives the lowest values for all three matrices while
LUc gives the highest values.
Figure 6. Average chunk diffusion delays with respect to number of peers
through Chunk Earliest Free Pair Scheduler
Figure 7. Average chunk distribution delays with respect to number of peers
through Chunk Earliest Free Pair Scheduler
Figure 8. Max chunk distribution delay with respect to number of peers
through Chunk Earliest Free Pair Scheduler
For the second run, the combination of LUc/CEFp gave the
highest values of average chunk diffusion delay whereas the
lowest values were obtained for LBc/CEFp. In case of average
chunk distribution, the highest values were observed for
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EUc/CEFp whereas the lowest were obtained for LBc/CEFp
as in the first case. Finally, the same trends as for average
chunk distribution delay were also obtained for max chunk
distribution delay. Therefore, for the given parameters, the
combination of LBc/CEFp is recommended. In absence of
DLc which selects the peer with shortest deadline and requires
a monitoring system for chunks, peer scheduler CEFp
combined with different chunk schedulers, the best results are
obtained by combining it with LBc which blindly sends latest
arrived chunks to the peer who made the request.
C. Chunk/Peer Schedulers Vs varying neighborhood size
The graphs for the case of varying neighborhood sizes with
different combinations of chunk and peer schedulers are
shown in figure 9,10and 11. The graphs show the curves
which were obtained for these tests. As can be seen in the
graphs, the lowest values of all the three matrices are obtained
by combination of DLc/CAFp. For varying neighborhood
sizes, CEFp combined with DLc gives the highest values
while the combination DLc/CAFp gives the lowest values for
average chunk diffusion delay. However, in case of average
chunk distribution delay, the highest values are obtained for
CEFp/Luc and the lowest values are obtained for DLC/CAFp.
Finally, for maximum chunk distribution delay, DLc/Cup
yields the highest values while DLc/CAFp gives the lowest
values. Therefore, for the given parameters, the combination
of DLC/CAFp is recommended. This is because it selects
those peers for exchange which do not have chunks thereby
increasing the contribution of all the peers in the system.
Figure 9. Average chunk diffusion delays with respect to neighborhood size

Figure 10. Max chunk distribution delay with respect to neighborhood size
Figure 11. Average chunk distribution delays with respect to
Neighborhood size
V. CONCLUSION
This research study explored different combination of
peer/chunk scheduling algorithms for a peer to peer system.
Three different runs of experiments were performed and the
results are reported in terms of chunk diffusion delay, max
chunk distribution delay and average chunk distribution delay.
When chunk scheduling algorithm (DLc) is combined with
different peer scheduling algorithms, the best results are
obtained by its combination with CEFp. This is because DLc
selects the chunks which lie within the deadline for those
peers who request the required chunks first.. Therefore, all the
peers have the required chunks on time thus reducing the
overall delays in the system However, this combination
requires that the deadline of all the chunks be monitored . In
absence of such monitoring system, peer scheduler CEFp
combined with different chunk schedulers, the best results are
obtained by combining it with LBc which blindly sends latest
arrived chunks to the peer which made the request. Finally,
when neighborhood size is taken into account the best results
are obtained by the combination of DLc/CAFp. So we
conclude that the optimal combination of chunk and peer
scheduler depends on system requirements.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We are thankful for the support of IGNITE National
Technology Fund (formerly known as ICT and R&D)
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