A technique for broadcasting data across a network is provided. An originating participant sends data to another participant, which in turn sends the data that it receives from a neighbor participant to its other neighbor participants. Communication in the broadcast network is controlled by a contact module that locates the neighbor participants to which the seeking participant can be connected and by a join module that establishes the connection between the neighbor participants and the seeking participant. Data is numbered sequentially so that data that is received out of order can be queued and rearranged.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,570, entitled "JOINING A BROADCAST CHANNEL," filed on Jul. 31, 2000 U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,577, "LEAVING A BROADCAST CHANNEL," filed on Jul. 31, 2000 currently patented. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,575, entitled "BROADCASTING ON A BROADCAST CHANNEL," filed on Jul. 31, 2000; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,572, entitled "CONTACTING A BROADCAST CHANNEL," filed on Jul. 31, 2000; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,023, entitled "DISTRIBUTED AUCTION SYSTEM," filed on Jul. 31, 2000 now under appeal. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,043, entitled "AN INFORMATION DELIVERY SERVICE," filed on Jul. 31, 2000 currently patented; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,024, entitled "DISTRIBUTED CONFERENCING SYSTEM," filed on Jul. 31, 2000; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/629,042, entitled "DISTRIBUTED GAME ENVIRONMENT," filed on Jul. 31, 2000 currently patented, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
A "PeerStreamer" provides receiver-driven peer-to-peer (P2P) media streaming for loosely coupled P2P networks. Peers in the network perform only simple operations, may cache all or part of the streaming media, do not collaborate with other peers, may be unreliable, and may drop offline or come online during any given streaming session. Clients in the network operate in real-time to coordinate peers, stream media from multiple peers, perform load balancing, handle online/offline states of peers, and perform decoding and rendering the streaming media. In one embodiment, the PeerStreamer uses high rate erasure resilient coding to allow multiple serving peers to hold partial media without conflict, such that clients simply retrieve fixed numbers of erasure coded blocks regardless of where and what specific blocks are retrieved. In another embodiment, the PeerStreamer uses embedded coded media to vary streaming bitrates according to available serving bandwidths and client queue status.
Methods and apparatus for implementing peer-to-peer relay. In one implementation, a method of detecting and recovering from violations in a peer-to-peer relay network includes: receiving a message at a peer system from a sending peer system connected to said peer system in a peer-to-peer relay network detecting a violation in said received message; and sending an alert message to each peer system connected to said peer system in said peer-to-peer relay network; wherein each peer system in said peer-to-peer relay network stores a connection limit defining a number of other peer systems up to which that peer system is permitted to connect, and each peer system stores a set of one or more relay rules for relaying data to other peer systems connected to that peer system.
Methods and apparatus for implementing peer-to-peer relay. In one implementation, a method of detecting and recovering from violations in a peer-to-peer relay network includes: receiving a message at a peer system from a sending peer system connected to said peer system in a peer-to-peer relay network detecting a violation in said received message; and sending an alert message to each peer system connected to said peer system in said peer-to-peer relay network; wherein each peer system in said peer-to-peer relay network stores a connection limit defining a number of other peer systems up to which that peer system is permitted to connect, and each peer system stores a set of one or more relay rules for relaying data to other peer systems connected to that peer system.
