As explained is our basic streams guide, all media players Buffer segments of a video stream prior to actually showing them. They will only show a segment once they are done buffering it, and while doing so they will start buffering the next segment.

On many occasions the server that functions as the stream's source is overloaded with clients asking for segments, 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 the brilliant P2P technology comes in to the rescue. It enables users to Share stream segments. By doing so is creates numerous sources that replace the overloaded servers, from which the media players can download those segments at a satisfactory rate. This process has great resemblance 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.

The current P2P programs are:

Coolstreaming, PPlive, PPstream, TVAnts, Sopcast, QQlive . Feidian (Aka Boiling Point), PDbox, Pcast, PPTVS and Mysee