Abstract
Entering and leaving of random peers will result in great variance of data availability in P2P networks, especially when multimedia streams require high priority to the immediate playback data. All peers must be able to receive the complete video segment before that playback. This requirement becomes more critical in mobile and wireless network environments where mobile peers have high frequency to leave and join the P2P network. Therefore, the provision of the tracker in the P2P networks is to accurately track the status of each peer and so to maintain high data availability being considered functionally. Our work deliberates the redundant mechanism of BitTorrent Tracker and designs a BT-like redundant tracker mechanism that is configured to this purpose, and presents the relative performance measure. The result shows that the proposed redundant tracker does not increase overheads and is able to upgrade stability to the playback operations in mobile P2P streaming networks. © 2009 IEEE.