Abstract: A method, system and computer program product for efficiently distributing video content. A peer-to-peer network and a content distribution network are used in combination to distribute video content. A content distribution network relies on servers distributed across the Internet to achieve high quality content delivery at a high cost. A peer-to-peer network distributes content among peers without incurring server side cost but may experience poor performance. The peer-to-peer network and the content distribution network are leveraged in a manner that achieves high content delivery and low cost by allowing the peer-to-peer network to serve as much content as possible while using the content distribution network to bootstrap the content in the peer-to-peer network and using it as a fallback whenever the peer-to-peer network has insufficient bandwidth, insufficient quality or when the missing piece of video content in the video buffer of the client device has an immediate deadline.

Abstract: A method, system and computer program product for efficiently distributing video content. A peer-to-peer network and a content distribution network are used in combination to distribute video content. A content distribution network relies on servers distributed across the Internet to achieve high quality content delivery at a high cost. A peer-to-peer network distributes content among peers without incurring server side cost but may experience poor performance. The peer-to-peer network and the content distribution network are leveraged in a manner that achieves high content delivery and low cost by allowing the peer-to-peer network to serve as much content as possible while using the content distribution network to bootstrap the content in the peer-to-peer network and using it as a fallback whenever the peer-to-peer network has insufficient bandwidth, insufficient quality or when the missing piece of video content in the video buffer of the client device has an immediate deadline.

Abstract: A method, system and computer program product for reducing network delay in video conferencing using random tree pushing. A plurality of nodes is randomly selected as next hop forwarders for a piece of content by a source who generates a video stream. Additional next hop forwarders are added to the randomly selected plurality of nodes to form a set of next hop forwarders until a total upload bandwidth of all next hop forwarders is no less than a bandwidth required to deliver the video stream to a set of receivers. The set of receivers in a video session is partitioned and each of the set of receivers is assigned to one of the set of next hop forwarders for forwarding the video stream to an assigned receiver either directly or through a multi-hop path.