A feedback based multicasting protocol for efficient video on demand

Video on demand services require video multicasting protocols to provide efficient and reliable performances over various client request rates. While reactive protocols perform very well when video demand is low, well-known reactive protocols can not effectively handle these videos in situations of high demand. In this work we have developed an efficient video multicasting protocol, the feedback based multicasting protocol, that requires lower bandwidth to multicast a video at any access rate. The proposed protocol uses an online stream merging scheme, requiring lower merging costs than other previous schemes. We have provided both analysis and simulation to show the performance gain over previous protocols. From an analytical method, we found the expected service bandwidth of the feedback based multi-casting protocol (FMP) is less than that of previous reactive protocols. Furthermore, The FMP shows similar bandwidth requirement to one of the best existing proactive protocols at high client request rates.