Tree Structure

The idea of peercasting plays an important role in the 4th generation of peer to peer file sharing networks, as it allows for a node to broadcast multiple live streams of data at the same time. The reason peercasting has been introduced into the 4th generation of peer to peer networks is for the simple fact that many downloaders wish to be able to preview a file as it is being downloaded. Due to the nature of peercasting, since it is basically a live stream, one can preview as he/she is downloading the file regardless as to whether it is a video or music file.

There have been a number of issues associated with the development of peercasting, most of which has to do with the connections themselves. In order to counter these connection issues which has plagued the peercasting networks, the concept of substreaming was developed into the networks. In all basic form, what happens is that when one node is peercasting, their client is actually sending out multiple simultaneous broadcasts of the same file, but to different nodes, this way if a connection is lost or rerouted, the stream can still be found again allowing the user to pick up the download where it was left at when the connection changed.

One of the most common forms of streaming peer to peer file sharing networks is that of the CoolStreaming network which allows a user/node broadcast a television show, thus the term peer to peer TV or for simplicity P2PTV. There are currently over 1 million users of this P2PTV form of file sharing.

In general however, the concepts of the peer to peer network have stayed the same, only the actual protocols have changed. When speaking about the tree structure of the 4th generation of peer to peer file sharing network, one must look at the older generations for the answer. Quite simply, most of the 4th generation of peer to peer file sharing protocols follow the same basic tree structure as the bit torrent protocol due to the fact that this network has already proven time after time to be one of the most stable peer to peer network as of date. The use of multiple nodes in which some nodes are considered as more than equal make connections to newer nodes as they connect and search for one of these super nodes. It is these super nodes that will then route all incoming as well as outgoing connections for the client in order to ensure that the network will not bottle neck.

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