End System Multicast

About ESM

ESM

End System Multicast (ESM) is an exciting technology that enables anyone on the Internet to broadcast high-quality video and audio to a large number of people. It uses a peer-to-peer network to distribute streaming video, which means that the people watching a video together also send video data to each other. This way, the bandwidth costs of streaming video are shared among the viewers.

ESM has been used to broadcast numerous events, including: SIGCOMM (2002 & 2003), NOSSDAV (2004), DARPA Grand Challenge (2004), the John Kerry Rally at CMU (2004), and INFOCOM (2005). It was also featured at the Intel Developer Fourm in 2005.

In the summer of 2006, members of the End System Multicast group founded Rinera Networks, a spin-off company sponsored by the CMU Center for Technology Transfer. Rinera Networks now develops the core networking component of ESM, while we develop the tools to support video broadcasting and viewing.

Learn more about the ESM technology, our publications and posters or related research.

The ESM Team

Project leader: Professor Hui Zhang

Current members: Aditya Ganjam, Brian Ellis, Albert Sheu, Justin Weisz

Past members: Yang-hua Chu, Frank Chan, Annie Cheng, James Crugnale, Brian Goodman, Navin Kumar, Tian Lin, David Murray, Eugene Ng, Jiin Joo Ong, Chris Palow, Sanjay Rao, Vishal Soni, Kay Sripanidkulchai, Philip Yam

The Technology

Content distribution

In ESM, end systems self-organize into an overlay tree using a distributed protocol. End systems also monitor their performance to other hosts (both bandwidth and latency), and adjust their position in the tree when an improvement can be made. In this tree, the optimization protocols have clustered hosts in different parts of the world, in order to improve performance and distribute the content more efficiently.

ESM Tree

Waypoints

In the event that there are not enough resources in the system to deliver high-quality video to everyone in the broadcast, waypoint machines are added to the system. These waypoints are machines with fast Internet connections, and they provide large amounts of bandwidth to ensure that everyone in the broadcast sees good performance. Currently, we use machines from PlanetLab as waypoints for our popular broadcasts.

Publications

  • Opportunities and Challenges of Peer-to-Peer Internet Video Broadcast. Jiangchuan Liu, Sanjay G. Rao, Bo Li, Hui Zhang. To appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • Watching Together: Integrating Text Chat with Video. Justin D. Weisz, Sara Kiesler, Hui Zhang, Yuqing Ren, Robert E. Kraut, Joseph A. Konstan, Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI, San Jose, CA, April, 2007.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • Measurement of Commercial Peer-to-Peer Live Video Streaming. Shahzad Ali, Anket Mathur, Hui Zhang, Workshop in Recent Advances in Peer-to-Peer Streaming, August, 2006.
  • Download the paper (pdf) or the presentation (pdf)
  • An Analysis of Live Streaming Workloads on the Internet. Kunwadee Sripanidkulchai, Bruce Maggs, and Hui Zhang, Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Taormina, Sicily, Italy, October, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • The Feasibility of Supporting Large-Scale Live Streaming Applications with Dynamic Application End-Points. Kunwadee Sripanidkulchai, Aditya Ganjam, Bruce Maggs, and Hui Zhang, Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, Portland, OR, August, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf) or the presentation in (pdf) or (ppt)
  • A Case for Taxation in Peer-to-Peer Streaming Broadcast. Yang-hua Chu, John Chuang, and Hui Zhang, ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Practice and Theory of Incentives and Game Theory in Networked Systems (PINS), Portland, OR, August, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • Considering Altruism in Peer-to-Peer Internet Streaming Broadcast. Yang-hua Chu and Hui Zhang, The 14th ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, June, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • Connectivity Restrictions in Overlay Multicast. Aditya Ganjam and Hui Zhang, The 14th ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, June, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf)
  • Early Experience with an Internet Broadcast System Based on Overlay Multicast. Yang-hua Chu, Aditya Ganjam, T. S. Eugene Ng, Sanjay G. Rao, Kunwadee Sripanidkulchai, Jibin Zhan, and Hui Zhang, USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Boston, MA, June, 2004.
  • Download the paper (pdf) or the presentation in (pdf) or (ppt)
  • A Case for End System Multicast. Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay G. Rao, Srinivasan Seshan, and Hui Zhang, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication (JSAC), Special Issue on Networking Support for Multicast, Vol. 20, No. 8, 2002.
  • Download the paper in (pdf) or (ps)
  • Enabling Conferencing Applications on the Internet using an Overlay Multicast Architecture. Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay G. Rao, Srinivasan Seshan, and Hui Zhang, Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, San Diego, CA, August 2001.
  • Download the paper in (pdf) or (ps), or download the presentation in (pdf) or (ppt)
  • A Case for End System Multicast. Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay G. Rao, and Hui Zhang, Proceedings of ACM SIGMETRICS, Santa Clara, CA, June 2000.
  • Download the paper in (pdf) or (ps), download the errata (txt), or download the presentation in (pdf) or (ppt)

Posters

Related research