An efficient resource management system for a streaming media distribution network

Abstract

This paper examines the design and evaluation of a TV on Demand (TVoD) system, consisting of a globally accessible storage architecture where all TV content broadcast over a period of time is made available for streaming. The proposed architecture consists of idle Internet Service Provider (ISP) servers that can be rented and released dynamically as the client load dictates. This paper examines issues of resource management and content placement within this Video Content Distribution Network (VCDN). The existing placement algorithm is computationally expensive and in some cases, infeasible to execute within any reasonable length of time. This work proposes a number of new placement heuristics each of which attempts intelligently to reduce the search space so that only the best proxies are considered for replica placement. An extensive evaluation of these placement algorithms is carried out to identify a good placement algorithm without being computationally expensive.