With the emergence of the technologies such as the P2P network and the overlay network, the Application Layer Multicast (ALM) technology is widely applied in the live/on-demand streaming media video. In the application layer technology, the original “unicast and best effort delivery” model of the Internet is maintained, the architecture of the original network is not changed, and the multicast function is implemented mainly by adding the functions of the end system. In the prior art, the multicast and the management of the application layer are implemented mainly through the Overlay node based on the P2P ALM algorithms.
The conventional ALM is implemented mostly by defining the private media distribution protocol based on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), causing that a user terminal has to match the multicast network to enjoy the live/on-demand service, so an application range of the live/on-demand service in the prior art is quite small, and the flexibility thereof is quite low.