4.3 Basic entities

A P2PSP overlay network is composed the entities (in general, nodes) that are explained following:

1. Source ($O$): It is the producer of the stream which is transmitted over the P2PSP network. Typically, it is a streaming server using the HTTP protocol such as Icecast [10]. The source controls the transmission bit-rate in the P2PSP network and in general can serve to several clients.
2. Player ($L$): Players request and consume (decode and play) the stream. Usually, players can use signal interpolation techniques that are applied when some parts of the stream is missing. This is specially usefull in the P2PSP because lost chunks tend to be spreaded along time.
3. Splitter ($S$): This entity receives the stream from the source, splits it into chunks of the same size and sends the chunks to peers.
4. Peer ($P$): Receives chunks from the splitter and from other peers, ensembles the stream and sends it to a player. Some chunks are also sent to other peers (see below). Notice also that the player and the peer usually run on the same host.
5. Team: A splitter and one or more peers. As an example, Figure 2) show a P2PSP team of size $3$ (the splitter is excluded of the computation of the team size).