Proxy-Assisted Periodic Broadcast for Video Streaming with Multiple Servers

Abstract

Large scale video streaming over Internet requires a large amount of resources such as server I/O bandwidth, network bandwidth. A number of video delivery techniques can be used to lower these requirements. Periodic broadcast by a central server combined with proxy caching offers a significant reduction of the aggregate network and server I/O bandwidth usage. However, the resources available to a single server are still limited. In this paper we propose a system with multiple geographically distributed servers. Multiple servers beside offering increased resources and service availability, allow a further reduction ofnetwork bandwidth usage. The challenge is how to use multiple servers efficiently. We first analyze the dependence of the resource requirements on the number and locations of the servers in a proxy-assisted periodicbroadcast video delivery system. Based on the character of the function describing such a dependence, we formulate and solve the problem of video location and delivery in a way that minimizes resource usage. We explore the trade-offs between network and I/O bandwidth requirements. We evaluate our proposed solutions through a number of tests.