Traditional internet streaming solutions expect each user to connect to a server of the content provider and to download all data from this server. The problem with this approach lies in its bad scalability as one server can only handle a limited number of parallel streams before running out of resources. As a consequence, radio stations and other multimedia providers have to maintain or rent server farms which are powerful enough to serve the entire audience of their most successful program with the largest number of parallel listeners. Thus, in general one third to one half of a radio station’s infrastructure is idle most of the time. Still it may happen that during peak hours not enough server capacity is available to serve all interested listeners. As a result, the audience witnesses low-quality, choppy playback or cannot connect to the stream at all.

Peer-assisted streaming is the way to solve this problem by involving the audience in the distribution process of their favorite program. Instead of fully acquiring the entire stream from the radio station's infrastructure each listener only gets some fragments of the stream directly from the servers. These fragmentsand are then exchanged with other listeners of the same program. Ultimately, the servers of the radio station only deliver a part of the total stream to each individual user. The remaining parts are downloaded from the network formed by the audience.

The performance of a peer-assisted network largely depends on the efficiency of the underlying network topology. Connecting the right listeners to each other is essential to guarantee maximal reliability and efficiency. At StreamForge we have developed the most sophisticated networking protocol on the market. Using a highly optimized network structure it is possible to guarantee interruption-free playback for the audience even if up to 75% of the listeners leave the network at the same time. The StreamForge solution also uses location information when setting up connections between different listeners of the same stream. Two people living in the same area have a higher probability of being connected to each other than if they lived far apart. As a consequence, the load on the internet backbone is reduced since many listeners can be served by sources within the local network of their internet service provider. Such local connections are also more robust than, for example, an intercontinental connection between a listener in Europe and a server in the US.

The benefits of a peer-assisted solution for broadcasters are twofold. First, less hardware infrastructure is required to stream their program. They can therefore cut down on their streaming costs including server hosting and bandwidth fees. The second and possibly even more important advantage is an improved quality of service. The audience enjoys more reliable streams which play smoothly also during peak hours when traditional solutions start to fail. Happy listeners remain longer in the stream and therefore the average size of the audience grows which in turn makes the program more attractive for advertisers.

At first glance the question may arise why the audience benefits from a solution which taps their resources. The answer to this question is that they get a quality of service which is impossible to maintain with traditional server based solutions. With StreamForge, streams in top quality become possible which are impracticable with other systems. If many people are interested in the same program such as the six o'clock news, our peer-assisted solution ensures that all interested listeners receive a perfect stream without any interruptions. Furthermore, the StreamForge solution is designed to only use idle resources and thus has no negative impact on the performance of other applications.