GoalBit: Create Your Own P2P Streaming Service and Broadcast Yourself
GoalBit a P2P (peer to peer) distribution system, designed for distribution of high-bandwidth live-content to all network peers without sacrificing quality. The new project was started by a group of Uruguay-based P2P experts and employs the multi-source approach meaning that the stream is decomposed into a number of flows sent by various peers to each client.
The system uses the recently proposed PSQA (Pseudo-Subjective Quality Assessment) technology for measuring the peers perceived quality and will probably become a worthy competitor for similar P2P streaming services such as PPLive and PPStream as it allows users who want to distribute their own live video programming to do just that.
“GoalBit uses a hybrid approach that combines the best of the BitTorrent world, with features from the likes of P2P networks such as Gnutella and KaZaA’s FastTrack network. Its network features a tracker similar to the one used by BitTorrent clients, but it also makes use of so-called super-peers,” writes NewTeevee.”These are computers with fat pipes that help to distribute the initial signal until it trickles down to users with ordinary DSL connections and limited upload speeds. Super-peers can be run either by the broadcasters themselves, or self-selected based on the connectivity of the individual end user. The idea of this multilayer approach is to prevent too many direct connections to the broadcaster while at the same time making the system scalable,” the how-it-works details continue.
Many already bet on the success of this service partly because it distributes the channel lists as small files similar to the way .torrent files are distributed via BitTorrent. As a broadcaster you just have to create a file like this using the GoalBit program, then get the news out (announce your stream) with a GoalBit tracker and finally upload the file to a web server. Supposedly, that’s all it takes to stream whatever you want to the world. Maybe after we do some tests of our own we’ll get back with more info.
Goalbit is currently at Version 0.5
