Tabbycat: an inexpensive scalable server for video-on-demand

Author

Thirumalai, Karthik ; Paris, Jehan-Francois ; Long, Darrell D E

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Houston Univ., TX, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

11-15 May 2003

Firstpage

896

Abstract

Tabbycat is a video server prototype demonstrating the benefits of a proactive approach for distributing popular videos on demand to a large customer base. Rather than reacting to individual customer requests, Tabbycat broadcasts the contents of the most popular videos according to a fixed schedule. As a result, the number of customers watching a given video does not affect the cost of distributing it. We found that one workstation with a single ATA disk drive and a fast Ethernet interface could distribute three two-hour videos while achieving a maximum customer waiting time of less than four minutes.

Keywords

broadcasting; protocols; video on demand; video servers; ATA disk drive; FDPB protocol; Tabbycat; ethernet interface; maximum customer waiting time; proactive approach; scalable video server; video broadcast distribution; video-on-demand; workstation; Broadcasting; Computer science; Ethernet networks; Lifting equipment; Multimedia communication; Network servers; Protocols; Prototypes; Scheduling; Video on demand;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Communications, 2003. ICC '03. IEEE International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7802-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICC.2003.1204467

Filename

1204467