Schemes for utilizing efficiently disk bandwidth and buffer in video server

Abstract

A video server which stores video streams should serve more users with the requested streams rapidly, satisfying their time constraints. For this purpose, the storage system of the video server needs a large disk bandwidth and buffer capacity. However, because the given disk bandwidth and buffer capacity are limited, technologies that utilize effectively the given disk bandwidth and buffer capacity without waste might be needed. We propose the schemes that not only support more users but also maintain the short startup latency by utilizing the disk bandwidth and buffer efficiently which also considers time constraint characteristics of the video stream. When multiple streams are served in the storage system of the multiple disk environment, the short startup latency might be induced by asynchronizing the disk head's moves. If the disk head also moves towards only one side, being based on double buffering, the limited disk bandwidth is saved owing to the reduced disk seek latency so that more streams might be served with satisfying the time constraint characteristics of the streams. The correctness of the proposed schemes is not only analyzed theoretically but also evaluated through simulations.