Many distribution algorithms have been proposed up to now for P2P real time streaming. However, due to the lack of basic theoretical results and bounds, common sense and intuitions and heuristics have driven their design so far. The consequence is that we can find in the literature a large variety of different choices about the main aspects of a P2P system, such as overlay topology, scheduling process and upload strategy. In this situation, it is difficult to establish unambiguously the absolute goodness of a particular algorithm or even the rationale behind a particular choice or solution. In this paper we propose and evaluate a theory-driven distribution algorithm for P2P real time streaming. We take advantage from a previous theoretical study, where: i) we derived a theoretical performance bound for forest-based overlay topologies regarding the number of nodes reachable in a given time interval or equivalently the time required to reach a given number of nodes; ii) we proved the optimality of Streamline, a distribution algorithm based on the serial transmission over forest-based topologies, in terms of its capability to reach such a bound. The Streamline algorithm is based on some ideal assumptions that prevent its practical implementation. In this paper we remove these assumptions and present a practical and working algorithm, named Operational Streamline or simply O-Streamline. We also evaluate the performance of O-Streamline, comparing them with the optimal bounds of Streamline. © 2008 IEEE.