Double P-Tree: A Distributed Architecture for Large-Scale Video-on-Demand

Abstract

In order to ensure a more widespread implementation of video-on-demand (VoD) services, it is essential that the design of cost-effective large-scale VoD (LVoD) architectures be able to support hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. The main keys for the designing of such architectures are high streaming capacity, low costs, scalability, fault tolerance, load balance, low complexity and resource sharing among user requests. To achieve these objectives, we propose a distributed architecture, called double P-Tree, which is based on a tree topology of independent local networks with proxies. The proxy functionality has been modified in such a way that it works at the same time as cache for the most-watched videos, and as a distributed mirror for the remaining videos. In this way, we manage to distribute main server functionality (as a repository of all system videos, server of proxy-misses and system manager) among all local proxies. The evaluation of this new architecture, through an analytical model, shows that double P-Tree architecture is a good approach for the building of scalable and fault-tolerant LVoD systems. Experimental results show that this architecture achieves a good tradeoff between effective bandwidth and storage requirements.

This work was supported by the MCyT-Spain under contract TIC 2001-2592 and partially supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya-Grup de Recerca Consolidat 2001SGR-00218.

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