Apparatus and method for providing multimedia streaming service by using point-to-point connection

Abstract

An apparatus for providing a multimedia streaming service by using a P2P approach includes a number of clients that distribute and store multimedia data and a number of servers that manage a multimedia data catalog listing data distributed and stored in the clients. The client, first, searches for multimedia data to be played stored in its local disk, and if there is no corresponding multimedia data in the local disk, the client calls for the multimedia data catalog to the server. The client searches for the corresponding multimedia data in the multimedia data catalog, and receives data from a client that stores the corresponding multimedia data. In case no clients store the corresponding multimedia data, he tries to receive data from the server.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.