Push/Pull Protocols for Streaming in P2P Systems

P2P approaches are being adopted in more and more applications, exploiting the intrinsic scaling properties of P2P systems. Streaming multicasting applications in particular seems to benefit most from the P2P approach. In this context, systems have been divided between those that push information from parent to child and those that pull it from child to parent. In this work we explore the generalization to push/pull protocols, where each peer can dynamically push or pull, playing alternately on short time frames, the role of parent or child.