Effective Utilization of User Resources in PA-VoD Systems with Channel Heterogeneity

Abstract

Nowadays, peer-assisted video on-demand (PA-VoD) systems offer high-definition (HD) channels to online users. However, the quality of service in such HD channels is usually not comparable to the standard-definition (SD) ones, as HD channels have to seek more bandwidth support and cache space from peers, which is a challenging task. In this paper, we focus on peer cache and upload bandwidth management at the same time for multi-channel PA-VoD systems with heterogeneous video playback rates, i.e., HD and SD channels coexist with different bandwidth and cache requirements. We first take user viewing behaviors into account and derive the statistical performance bounds on server bandwidth consumption, which lead to the conclusion that such behaviors can easily affect the provisioning for HD channels, even if there is enough upload bandwidth from SD peers. We then formulate bandwidth allocation as a linear programming problem to calculate the tight lower bound at any time instant, with global information available and system-wide coordination possible (e.g., through a tracker). Next, we design heuristic algorithms for peer cache replacement and upload bandwidth allocation to fit with the nature of a P2P structure, and the results are compared with the statistical and instance performance bounds through extensive simulation, which shows the efficacy of the proposed algorithms in dynamic scenarios.