Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

P2P-Next develops an open source, efficient, trusted, personalized, user-centric, and participatory television and media delivery system with social and collaborative connotation using the emerging Peer-to-Peer (P2P) paradigm, which takes into account the existing EU legal framework. The P2P-Next integrated project will build a next generation Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content delivery platform, to be designed, developed, and applied jointly by a consortium consisting of high-profile academic and industrial players.

The current infrastructure of the Internet is not suited to simultaneous transmission of live events to millions of people (i.e. broadcasting). With millions of potential users, this will easily congest the Internet. Also, the use of Audiovisual Media is moving from a collective and passive approach to personal active behaviour. At the same time use patterns are moving away from the classic model of linear broadcast TV. The TV set no longer has the monopoly of delivery of audiovisual content; the PC and mobile devices are also becoming increasingly important.

In such heterogeneous and demanding environments, P2P-based technology is considered an essential ingredient for future efficient and low-cost delivery of professional and user created content. This development will have important consequences for the existing business models and institutions, as well as for content production, content distribution, and end user experience.

In response to these challenges, the objective of P2P-Next is to move forward the technical enablers to facilitate new business scenarios for the complete value chain in the content domain, i.e. from a linear unidirectional push mode to a user centric, time and place independent platform paradigm.

P2P-Next will develop a platform that takes open source development, open standards, and future proof iterative integration as key design principles.