Method for buffer management for video swarms in a peer-to-peer network

1. A buffer for buffing multimedia content to enable reliable streaming of multimedia content in a real-time peer-to-peer network, comprising:

a first section being loaded with a first portion of the multimedia content during a first time interval, wherein the first portion of the multimedia content is retrieved from at least one resource node, wherein the at least one resource node is a node in the real-time peer-to-peer network that has an available upload bandwidth that can be contributed to a channel swarm; and

a second section being loaded with a second portion of the multimedia content during a second time interval, wherein the second portion of the multimedia content is retrieved from at least one reliable node during a second time interval, wherein the buffer continuously delivers the multimedia content including the first and second portions thereof to a consumer node, wherein the at least one reliable node receives the multimedia content directly from a broadcaster and is guaranteed to provide the multimedia content to at least the consumer node connected thereto, wherein the consumer node, the least one resource node and the at least one reliable node constitute the channel-swarm of a particular broadcast television channel in the real-time peer-to-peer network.

2. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the second time interval being subsequent to the first time interval.

3. The buffer of claim 2 , wherein the buffer further comprises a third section being loaded a third portion of the multimedia content by accessing at least one reliable node for multimedia content during a third time interval, the third time interval occurring prior to the first time interval.

4. The buffer of claim 3 , wherein the communication in the third time interval is in a push mode.

5. The buffer of claim 3 , wherein the buffer is a tangible storage structured to include at least the first section, the second section and the third section, wherein at least one of the first section, the second section, and the third section has a variable length.

6. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the communication in the first time interval is in a push mode and the communication in the second time interval is in a pull mode.

7. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the buffer is filled during the second time interval with the multimedia content of the first time interval which the at least one resource node was unable to deliver.

8. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the first section is being loaded with a fourth portion retrieved from another consumer node in the peer-to-peer network during a fourth time interval, wherein the fourth time interval is within the first time interval and immediately precedes the second time interval.

9. The buffer of claim 8 , wherein the length of time of each of the first time interval, the second time interval, the third time interval, and the fourth time interval is programmable.

10. The buffer of claim 9 , wherein each of the length of time of each of the first time interval, the second time interval, the third time interval, and the fourth time interval is dynamically programmable by the consumer node.

11. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the buffer is a tangible storage structured to include at least the first section and the second section wherein at least one of the first section and the second section has a variable length.

12. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the at least one reliable node is configured to guarantee delivery of the multimedia content to the consumer node.

13. The buffer of claim 1 , wherein the multimedia content comprises at least one of: video, audio.