[icecast] [OT] Prior art & could use your help - Content distribution

[J.A. Bezemer]

[NOTE: This message may be regarded off-topic. Please reply privately
only, not to the list.]

Hi all!

Over the past few months, I've been collaborating with a few people on
subjects that fall in the category of web radio. (In case you don't know
what that is: imagine a radio with built-in analog modem that receives and
plays MP3 or rather Vorbis streams from the net.) Of course such a system
would start quite small, but we're "designing" it to handle at least
100,000 receivers (radios) and 3,000 senders (radio stations) easily.

This mail is NOT intended to discuss reasons, feasibility, or
profitability. We don't know at all if we'll ever have the courage to turn
theory into practice. However, during our discussions, several interesting
ideas have surfaced that we couldn't find being published anywhere (but
then, searching isn't very easy). So, these ideas could just be considered
inventions (even though WE won't) and people could just submit patent
applications for it, at least in the USA and probably also in Europe.

We don't want that to happen, so we are publicly and widely disclosing our
ideas. We had the intention to use the gratis facility at PriorArt.org, 
and if that was still in operation, there wouldn't have been any need to
bother you. But PriorArt.org was closed down, and we don't have the US$100
that IP.com asks (apart from the question if they can be trusted).

If we understand things correctly, patent law only recognizes a document
as prior art (i.e. for _completely_ invalidating a patent claim) if it was
a) posted publically and widely, and available/accessible to people
reasonably skilled in the subject matter, and b) has a clear and
unforgeable publication date. The first requirement should be met by
posting this disclosure to several formus related to the subject; the
second requirement is where you come in. 

TO HELP US IN THIS MATTER: you can easily, undeniably and unforgeably
confirm that this disclosure is publically accessible today, by:

 1) completing this simple form:
        Name : ______
        Address/City/Country [handy but not required] : ______
        I hereby confirm that the disclosure below was publically
        accessible on [date] : ______
 and
 2) mailing back this ENTIRE message (possibly quoted in any way),
    _GPG/PGP-SIGNED_, to this address:
        priorart at opensourcepartners.nl

Note that you do not have to actually read the rest of this message,
mailing back a _signed_ copy is enough. 

We will NOT publish anything we receive, only store it in a safe place to
use it in the courts should the need arise.

Thanks in advance for your help,

  Anne Bezemer

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    DISCLOSURE: METHOD FOR PIECEWISE DISTRIBUTION OF ANY LIVE/NON-LIVE
    CONTENT OVER DIGITAL (COMPUTER) NETWORKS, AND DECENTRALIZED SYSTEM TO
    CONTROL THAT DISTRIBUTION

Streaming is hot. Streaming MP3 radio shows is hot. Streaming live
webcasts is hot. Everyone wants streaming media.

But streaming has one big problem. Every client needs one connection to
the streaming server and all streamed data is transmitted to each
individual client over its own connection. This means massive bandwidth
usage at the server (which is very expensive) and requires a powerful
server to handle all simultaneous connections.

Multicasting could help (if it were widely implemented and reliable) but
in our situation there is a much more interesting solution: "piecewise
streaming".

The basic idea of piecewise streaming is simple. At the source, the
content stream(s) is/are cut into small parts of, for example, 15 to 30
seconds. The result is series of static files that can be distributed in
any way traditionally used (or newly invented) for distributing static
files, such as e-mail with multiple To: addresses on the same host, or
multiple clients accessing one mailbox; or Freenet with its automatic
caching/multiplication mechanisms.

But the easiest way is just a webserver. Web space for limited use is
cheap and often comes free with a dial-in account (that our "radios" need
anyway, so we have plenty). And the second advantage is that practically
all ISPs have a simple caching web proxy, which can easily cache our
content when it is distributed in static parts from a webserver, without
requiring any reconfiguration. Since we can ("should be able to") control
all "radios" with a management system, it should be easy to have everyone
that listens to one particular stream dial in to the same ISP and use the
same caching web proxy. 

Some other advantages of this method:
- Content is stored while transmitting, no separate storage server needed.
- Content is stored and kept for a considerable time; this allows pausing
  and resuming of live broadcasts, possibly with some small overlap when
  restarting. (And pausing/resuming can also mean turning the "radio"
  completely off and on again.)
- To get, say, 1 minute of content in the "radio"'s buffer, you don't have
  to wait one minute for the live content to stream in; you just start
  playing at live-minus-1-minute and the buffer will be filled at full
  modem speed. (Actually this is possible with traditional streaming too,
  but not widely used.)
- With the easily-filled 1-minute buffer, it is possible to hang up and
  dial in to another ISP without the user noticing anything.
- Error detection and error recovery is easy with per-piece checksums and
  re-downloading of corrupted pieces; there is enough time with a 1-minute
  buffer.
- Switching servers is trivial; any piece of the content can be available
  from another server using another transport method (HTTP, FTP, whatever,
  either client- or server- or third-party-initiated). There can also be
  multiple ways to get any particular piece.
- Works for any kind of content, there is no difference any more between
  static files (like text and pictures) and streams (like audio and
  video). Also works with non-public (for example encrypted, like 
  RealAudio) content; the way to access it (for example decryption key)
  can be obtained via other means (for example a separate negotiation with
  an authentication server).
- Client-side processing can be implemented relatively easy. For example a
  radio program only needs to consist of pointers to never-changing MP3/
  Vorbis pieces and instructions for the client to perform cross-fading,
  sometimes adding in a little live piece or a news broadcast shared by
  several stations. (The MP3/Vorbis pieces can be hidden from the general
  public in any way conventionally used (or newly invented) to hide
  files.)
- Content streams and content codings can be combined in any way the user
  wants and the "radio" is capable of. For example audio, video and
  subtitling (text) with no transmission of video and subtitling when the
  viewer window is minimized; or automatic switching between high- and
  low-quality codings depending on the user's activities, available CPU
  power and bandwidth, without the content server noticing anything.

This distribution method needs some form of control (or management), if
only to let the clients know what pieces in what codings are available
where using which transmission method. Of course this can be done using
any communication method, such as a (probably automatically updated)
webpage, but that would not be very scalable or reliable. 

Instead, we are more interested in a decentralized and redundant system of
"control servers" (as opposed to for example "content servers" or possibly
"content translation servers" (for re-coding, mixing, whatever)). A
structure like the Gnutella network is possible, in which each node
(control server) would have connections to a constant (on average) number
of other nodes. Clients only need to connect to one of the control servers
to have access to all available control data.

The data present in the entire control system can be organized in a
database-like fashion with relatively small records; queries can be issued
on the control server network and all servers having matching records will
send a reply. Each control server should have a few backup servers
somewhere in the network that are kept up to date on changes in (all, or a
part of) that server's records, and that can take over the functionality
if that server disappears somehow. This means data (records) has a high
mobility and can be at any control server at any point in time.

A consequence of high data mobility is that queries must have been
processed by all nodes (possibly represented by their backups) in the
network before conclusions can be drawn. The only way to be really certain
of that, is not to wait a long time and just hope everyone has seen the
query (not reliable and very user-unfriendly too), but to have everyone
that has seen the query actually send a confirmation of that fact, in one
way or another. This is where the standard Gnutella structure is less
useful.

There are two trivial network structures that possess the properties we
need, namely the fully-connected network and the ring structure. The
former has the advantage of very small and constant search times, but
needs connections to every node, which does not scale well. The latter can
be compared to a token ring network, in which each node only has 2
connections, but this has the disadvantage of potentially very long search
times because the nodes search sequentially rather than in parallel. (In a
unidirectional ring network, the "query seen" confirmation is implicit
with the sender receiving back its own query; in a bidirectional network,
the node in which the "collision" occurs can open a separate connection to
the query-sender.) And of course a simple ring may have large problems
with unreliable connections.

We are currently investigating hybrid networks, combining several
structures into one network, concentrating mostly on hybrid ring/fully-
connected networks. These can be described either as a set of fully
connected groups, interconnected by one or more rings; or as one or more
rings, of which (some or all) nodes are members of (one or more) fully
connected groups that interconnect the rings. The idea is that the number
of rings and fully connected groups can be scaled adaptively to achieve
both acceptable complexity and acceptable search time.

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