Editing Peercasting (section)

==Operation==
Peercasting usually works by having peers automatically relay a stream to other peers. The P2P [[overlay network]] helps peers find a relay for a specified stream to connect to. This method suffers from poor quality of service during times when relays disconnect or peers need to switch to a different relay, referred to as "churn".<ref>{{cite book|title=Middleware for Network Eccentric and Mobile Applications|first1= Benoît |last1=Garbinato |first2= Hugo |last2=Miranda |first3=Luís |last3=Rodrigues|publisher=[[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |edition=1st |year=2009 |isbn=978-3-540-89706-4}}</ref>

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 (protocol)|BitTorrent]] or Dijjer. However, this suffers from excessive overhead for the formation of a new swarm every minute.

A new technique is to stripe a live stream into multiple substreams, akin to [[redundant array of independent disks|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 code]]s are an efficient way to make and combine the substreams).  In turn, these streams are relayed using the first method.

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.