  The adaptation of the BitTorrent protocol to multimedia on-demand streaming
systems essentially lies on the modification of its two core algorithms, namely
the piece and the peer selection policies, respectively. Much more attention
has though been given to the piece selection policy. Within this context, this
article proposes three novel peer selection policies for the design of
BitTorrent-like protocols targeted at that type of systems: Select Balanced
Neighbour Policy (SBNP), Select Regular Neighbour Policy (SRNP), and Select
Optimistic Neighbour Policy (SONP). These proposals are validated through a
competitive analysis based on simulations which encompass a variety of
multimedia scenarios, defined in function of important characterization
parameters such as content type, content size, and client interactivity
profile. Service time, number of clients served and efficiency retrieving
coefficient are the performance metrics assessed in the analysis. The final
results mainly show that the novel proposals constitute scalable solutions that
may be considered for real project designs. Lastly, future work is included in
the conclusion of this paper.
