A server array approach for video-on-demand service on local area networks

  • Authors:

  • Y. B. Lee;P. C. Wong

  • Affiliations:

  • Advanced Network Systems Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;Advanced Network Systems Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

  • Venue:
  • INFOCOM'96 Proceedings of the Fifteenth annual joint conference of the IEEE computer and communications societies conference on The conference on computer communications - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

Most video-on-demand (VOD) systems use a single, powerful server to deliver video streams to users. In this paper, we consider a novel server array approach for delivering video services on networks. Such an approach has the benefits of (1) more system capacity, as individual server has individual disk and network channel, (2) scalable, as more clients can be supported by adding more servers without data duplication, and (3) fault tolerant, as server-level fault-tolerant and fault-recovery schemes can be devised. We describe our experiences and results in the implementation of a server-array-based VOD system. Our system now has four P5-90 servers serving 40 PC-486 stations using a 10Mbps Ethernet switch. The system can deliver 40 simultaneous and independent 1.2Mbps, 30 fps, full TV size, MPEG-1 video streams. Our results demonstrate that with careful protocol designs, Ethernet can deliver continuous video and audio services.