Widespread adoption of broadband Internet and the introduction of multimedia-capable mobile devices enable the proliferation of many streaming video services. However, best-effort networks are not natively designed to such a purpose. They do not provide any guarantees for delivering the content on time or offer constant service quality. Furthermore, video streaming presents a heavy load for servers. This is especially the case for special events that bring an enormous amount of users causing so called “flash crowds,” which overload unsuitable systems. Peer-to-peer (P2P) techniques can be successfully exploited to build scalable streaming systems using the distributed resources of users themselves. In this chapter, the authors explore the different techniques proposed in the context of adaptive streaming, both live and on demand. Each covered approach addresses the video streaming problem from a different perspective, and so, brings specific advantages and disadvantages in its solution.
