Delivery of compressed videos from video servers employing cycle-based data-block retrieval discipline

The significant frame size variability exhibited in the compressed videos imposes a great challenge on network delivery. In this paper we propose an efficient flow control scheme, employed in the peer stations (i.e., servers and clients), for delivery of prestored compressed videos in a video-on-demand (VOD) system. This scheme resorts to an off-line analysis on the video frame sizes and server properties for figuring out the necessary buffer space and network bandwidth. The server platform of particular interest obeys a cycle-based data-block retrieval discipline, which is an essential technique to reduce the disk seek time for leveraging the disk throughput for supporting a large number of concurrent video accesses. Such a discipline is taken into account here to guarantee smooth delivery of variable-bit-rate videos. In run-time a server-driven control model is in use, where a server performs the primary flow control task, without relying on any feedback from clients. The scheme has been implemented in our prototype VOD system to support both unicast- and multicast communication paradigms under an RSVP-enabled network.