How it Works

All media players buffer sections of a video stream before showing them and they only show a section once it has been buffered, and while they show it they will start buffering the next section.

On many occasions the server that functions as the stream's source is overloaded with clients asking for sections, and will not be able to satisfy this demand at a high enough rate. The clients' media players will have to stop showing the streams in order to finish buffering the missing segments, resulting in a segmented video stream.

That's where P2P technology comes in, it enables users to share stream segments so it creates numerous sources that replace the overloaded servers, from which the media players can download those segments at a satisfactory rate. This process is very similar to P2P file sharing clients such as BITTORENT.

Since this technology relies on sharing, the more segments one uploads to other users, the more he is entitled to download segments for himself from others. For this reason it may take a few minutes before the received stream would run continuously. One has to upload to other users at a rate high enough to be able to download segments in a sufficient rate himself. Therefore it is recommended to establish a connection as early as possible before the starting time of a desired event. The more users sharing segments there are the better stream each one of them will get.