Peer-Assisted Streaming

Live Peer-Assisted Streaming
The Abacast Live Peer-Assisted technology (Patent #6,970,937 B1) uses a central server to communicate with each user. The actual stream may be provided by either the server itself or, more likely, by another user or users who simply redirects the stream or portions of the stream.

The Abacast server continually monitors the network as necessary to optimize user connections. This creates a closely monitored network that provides true end-to-end Quality of Service resulting in less skipping, buffering and breaks than other streaming technologies including traditional unicast.

On-Demand Peer-Assisted Streaming
The On-Demand Hybrid P2P network is fully integrated with the Live P2P Network as described, but functions under the covers somewhat differently in order to properly address on-demand distribution requirements. 

The patent-pending On-Demand Hybrid P2P network (Patent App # S/N 10/440,388) is a private, centrally controlled, secure peer to peer network using the same peers as the live service.  It utilizes unused bandwidth and small amounts of disk space to efficiently and securely distribute content at lower costs and at higher quality than Unicast. 

Unlike other P2P technologies, Abacast’s On-Demand Peer-Assisted Manager manages the network cache based on both anticipated and current demand. This means that all or most of the content can be served from the efficient Abacast Hybrid P2P network, even under initial demand spikes.