Peercasting is a method of multicasting streams, usually audio and/or video, to the internet via peer-to-peer technology. It can be used for commercial, independent, and amateur multicasts. Peercasting seems to be a workaround to the lack of functioning IP Multicast from most ISPs. Routing Schemes anycast broadcast multicast unicast Multicast is sometimes also used to refer to a multiplexed broadcast, although that is a very different thing and should not be confused. ... Streaming media is media that is consumed (heard or viewed) (mostly in the form of clips) while it is being delivered. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... IP Multicast is a method whereby a message can be sent simultaneously to several computers, instead of singly to one computer. ... An Internet service provider (abbr. ...

It usually works by having peers automatically relay a stream to a couple more peers, and the P2P network helping peers find a relay for a specified stream to connect to. However, this suffers from poor quality of service during times when relays disconnect or peers need to switch to a different relay.

Another solution used is minute swarming, wherein a live stream is broken up into minute length files that are swarmed via P2P software such as BitTorrent, Coral, or Dijjer. However, this suffers from excessive overhead for the formation of a new swarm every minute. The BitTorrent logo The image above is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Coral is an open source, peer-to-peer content distribution network designed to mirror web content. ... Dijjer is a peer-to-peer web cache. ...

A new solution is to stripe a live stream into multiple substreams, akin to RAID striping. Forward error correction and timing information is applied to these substreams such that the original stream can be reformed using at least all but one of the substreams (fountain codes are an efficient way to make and combine the substreams). In turn, these streams are relayed using the first method. In computing, a redundant array of inexpensive disks, also later known as redundant array of independent disks (commonly abbreviated RAID) is a system which uses multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Error correction and detection. ... Fountain codes are a class of Erasure codes with the property that a potentially limitless sequence of encoding symbols can be generated from a given set of source symbols such that the original source symbols can be recovered from any subset of the encoding symbols of size equal to or...

Another solution is to permit clients to connect to a new relay and resume streaming from where they left off by their old relay. Relays would retain a back buffer to permit clients to resume streaming from anywhere within the range of said buffer. This would essentially be an extension to the Icecast protocol. Icecast is a FOSS streaming media project maintained by the Xiph. ...

Also, sometimes downloading Bit Torrents of TV Shows is referred to as peercasting, but this usage of peercasting is not accurate. The BitTorrent logo The image above is a candidate for speedy deletion. ...

Software used for peercasting

• Alluvium
• FreeCast
• IceShare
• Octoshape
• Peercast
• StreamerP2P
• RawFlow - an P2P Streaming Technology Company
• Tribler
• PeerStream Audio/Video P2P Streaming Server