Buffer-Sharing Techniques in Service-Guaranteed Video Servers

Advances in networking and storage technology have made it possible to deliver on-demand services over networks such as the emerging video-on- demand (VOD) applications. Although a variety of studies have been focused on designing video servers suitable for VOD applications, the number of concurrent on-demand services supported by such servers is often limited by the I/O bandwidth of the storage systems. Recently, several researchers have focused on providing guaranteed services instead of on-demand services in a VOD system. A service is said to be guaranteed if every viewer can be served within a specified waiting time after the video has been subscribed. This paper describes a model called a buffer-sharing autonomy, which combines batching and bridging techniques to provide guaranteed services to VOD systems. We also describe how buffer-sharing techniques can be used in this model to provide the same services with fewer buffer resource through the use of playback-rate alteration. Additionally, in order to make buffer sharing efficient, it is important to group appropriate video streams together to share buffer resource. Four grouping policies are proposed for this purpose and the benefits yielded are also analyzed and compared. Finally, the results of our experiments show that the proposed buffer-sharing techniques promise the provision of guaranteed video services at low cost.     

Constant bit rate network transmission of variable bit rate continuous media in Video-On-Demand servers

Multimedia computing is rapidly emerging as the next generation standard for human-computer interaction. One class of multimedia applications that has been gaining much attention is the real-time display of continuous media data such as video and audio, commonly known as Video-On-Demand (VOD) service. Although advances in computer and network technologies have made VOD service feasible, providing guaranteed quality, real-time video delivery still poses many technical challenges. One such challenge involves the transmission of continuous media traffic over high-speed networks.In this paper, we present an algorithm for determining the minimum buffer requirement for avoiding overflow or underflow at the client video display process, allowing the network scheduler at the VOD server to enforce a constant bit rate delivery of variable bit rate encoded continuous media. This strategy results in reduced congestion and cell loss at the network switch, and in simplified admission control parameters. Initial results indicate that buffer requirements for typical video streams range from 3.7 to 14.6 Megabytes, which is acceptable by today's multimedia PC standards. Further, we show that this approach increases the number of streams that can be multiplexed by a factor of 4.6 to 9.9 times when compared to peak and 90%-of-peak bandwidth allocation strategies.ECE Dept., Syracuse University, Syracuse, USACIS Dept., Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA     

Adaptive video-on-demand broadcasting in ubiquitous computing environment

Video-on-demand (VOD) is a service that allows users to view any video program from a server at the time of their choice, such kind of services are expected to be popular in future ubiquitous computing environment. Lots of broadcasting protocols for VOD services have been proposed, but they usually focus only on the tradeoff between bandwidth and delay, thus they are usually not efficient for the local storage. Since the ubiquitous network is heterogeneous and users will have different resource and communication capability, we need to address the storage issue in VOD systems. In this paper, we present several new effective broadcasting schemes, which can intelligently adjust the solution according to available bandwidth and local storage to achieve an ideal waiting time.     

一种克服磁盘存取受限的视频点播机制

1 引言在视频服务器中,大量的待点播视频流数据以分级存储模式被加以组织,其中点播概率小的节目被存放在低速廉价的光盘库中作为非在线视频(off-line)。为保证视频的播送质量,非在线视频必须先存放到硬盘缓冲区中才能被播放。进一步考虑到网络传输性能因素,将视频服务器按层次化结构进行组织,将待点播的视频数据靠近用户存放,保证缓存的数据     

Design and analysis of a video-on-demand server

The availability of high-speed networks, fast computers and improved storage technology is stimulating interest in the development of video on-demand services that provide facilities similar to a video cassette player (VCP). In this paper, we present a design of a video-on-demand (VOD) server, capable of supporting a large number of video requests with complete functionality of a remote control (as used in VCPs), for each request. In the proposed design, we have used an interleaved storage method with constrained allocation of video and audio blocks on the disk to provide continuous retrieval. Our storage scheme interleaves a movie with itself (while satisfying the constraints on video and audio block allocation. This approach minimizes the starting delay and the buffer requirement at the user end, while ensuring a jitter-free display for every request. In order to minimize the starting delay and to support more non-concurrent requests, we have proposed the use of multiple disks for the same movie. Since a disk needs to hold only one movie, an array of inexpensive disks can be used, which reduces the overall cost of the proposed system. A scheme supported by our disk storage method to provide all the functions of a remote control such as “fast-forwarding”, “rewinding” (with play “on” or “off”), “pause” and “play” has also been discussed. This scheme handles a user request independent of others and satisfies it without degrading the quality of service to other users. The server design presented in this paper achieves the multiple goals of high disk utilization, global buffer optimization, cost-effectiveness and high-quality service to the users.     

Dynamic real-time scheduling strategies for interactive continuous media servers

In this paper, we propose and study a dynamic approach to schedule real-time requests in a video-on-demand (VOD) server. Providing quality of service in such servers requires uninterrupted and on-time retrieval of motion video data. VOD services and multimedia applications further require access to the storage devices to be shared among multiple concurrent streams. Most of the previous VOD scheduling approaches use limited run-time,0 information and thus cannot exploit the potential capacity of the system fully. Our approach improves throughput by making use of run-time information to relax admission control. It maintains excellent quality of service under varying playout rates by observing deadlines and by reallocating resources to guarantee continuous service. It also reduces start-up latency by beginning service as soon as it is detected that deadlines of all real-time requests will be met. We establish safe conditions for greedy admission, dynamic control of disk read sizes, fast initial service, and sporadic services. We conduct thorough simulations over a wide range of buffer capacities, load settings, and over varying playout rates to demonstrate the significant improvements in quality of service, throughput and start-up latency of our approach relative to a static approach.     

Efficient support for interactive service in multi-resolution VOD systems

Advances in high-speed networks and multimedia technologies have made it feasible to provide video-on-demand (VOD) services to users. However, it is still a challenging task to design a cost-effective VOD system that can support a large number of clients (who may have different quality of service (QoS) requirements) and, at the same time, provide different types of VCR functionalities. Although it has been recognized that VCR operations are important functionalities in providing VOD service, techniques proposed in the past for providing VCR operations may require additional system resources, such as extra disk I/O, additional buffer space, as well as network bandwidth. In this paper, we consider the design of a VOD storage server that has the following features: (1) provision of different levels of display resolutions to users who have different QoS requirements, (2) provision of different types of VCR functionalities, such as fast forward and rewind, without imposing additional demand on the system buffer space, I/O bandwidth, and network bandwidth, and (3) guarantees of the load-balancing property across all disks during normal and VCR display periods. The above-mentioned features are especially important because they simplify the design of the buffer space, I/O, and network resource allocation policies of the VOD storage system. The load-balancing property also ensures that no single disk will be the bottleneck of the system. In this paper, we propose data block placement, admission control, and I/O-scheduling algorithms, as well as determine the corresponding buffer space requirements of the proposed VOD storage system. We show that the proposed VOD system can provide VCR and multi-resolution services to the viewing clients and at the same time maintain the load-balancing property. Received June 9, 1998 / Accepted April 26, 1999     

基于磁盘存取受限的视频流组播策略

在宽带环境下，系统的网络通信能力很强，为了提高视频点播的并发点播数和实时响应性能，需要解决视频服务器端磁盘存取速度的瓶颈效应，文章提出的视频组播策略采用了自适应缓存算法，它在综合考虑网络通信能力和磁盘存取速度的基础上，优化了系统的整体性能，提高了传统视频点播批处理算法的效率。     

基于矩阵的视频存储模式研究

视频存储分配技术在视频服务器主要技术之一,对VOD应用性能起决定性作用。本文提出一种视频存储模式的定义和基于矩阵的视频存储模式,在该模式中,采用三层结构存储基于矩阵分割的视频流,实现了VOD系统的无延迟即点即播,同时通过在视频流GOP中减少B帧的方法,减少复制数据段的数目,从而减少系统的内存需求。实验表明,该视频存储模式是有效可行的。     

Merging video streams in a multimedia storage server: complexity and heuristics

Due to recent advances in network, storage and data compression technologies, video-on-demand (VOD) service has become economically feasible. It is a challenging task to design a video storage server that can efficiently service a large number of concurrent requests on demand. One approach to accomplishing this task is to reduce the I/O demand to the VOD server through data- and resource-sharing techniques. One form of data sharing is the stream-merging approach proposed in [5]. In this paper, we formalize a static version of the stream-merging problem, derive an upper bound on the I/O demand of static stream merging, and propose efficient heuristic algorithms for both static and dynamic versions of the stream-merging problem.     

Resource-aware and quality-fair video-streaming using multiple adaptive TCP connections

In this paper, we present a resource-aware and quality-fair video content sharing system. When a video sharing server has insufficient uplink bandwidth and needs to serve multiple video content sharing services via streaming or downloading to other client peers using TCP transport, each service shares the limited uplink bandwidth equitably, due to the fair sharing characteristics inherent in TCP. However this bandwidth fair sharing cannot always guarantee quality fairness among the services, due to the specific requirements for video-streaming services, such as the playout rate and the size of the playout buffer. In our system, the server uses multiple TCP connections adaptively, depending on the anticipated status of each client playout buffer, to guarantee the bandwidth of each video-streaming session. By guaranteeing the quality of each video-streaming session, without the quality loss of other service sessions, the proposed system can successfully achieve service quality fairness. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can dramatically enhance the quality of each streaming session and thus provide service quality fairness among simultaneous multiple heterogeneous video-streaming services and content download services.     

Use of analytical performance models for system sizing and resourceallocation in interactive video-on-demand systems employing data sharingtechniques

In designing cost-effective video-on-demand (VOD) servers, efficient resource management and proper system sizing are of great importance. In addition to large storage and I/O bandwidth requirements, support of interactive VCR functionality imposes additional resource requirements on the VOD system in terms of storage space, as well as disk and network bandwidth. Previous works have used data sharing techniques (such as batching, buffering, and adaptive piggybacking) to reduce the I/O demand on the storage server. However, such data sharing techniques complicate the provision of VCR functions and diminish the amount of benefit that can be obtained from data sharing techniques. The main contribution of this paper is a simple, yet powerful, analytical modeling approach which allows for analysis, system sizing, resource allocation, and parameter setting for a fairly general class of data sharing techniques which are used in conjunction with the providing of VCR-type functionality. Using this mathematical model, we can determine the proper amount of resources to be allocated for normal playback as well as for service of VCR functionality requests while satisfying predefined system performance requirements. To illustrate the usefulness of our model, we focus on a specific data sharing scheme which combines the use of batching, buffering, and adaptive piggybacking, as well as allows for the use of VCR functions. We show how to utilize this mathematical model for system sizing and resource allocation purposes     

A survey on peer-to-peer video streaming systems

Video-over-IP applications have recently attracted a large number of users on the Internet. Traditional client-server based video streaming solutions incur expensive bandwidth provision cost on the server. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking is a new paradigm to build distributed network applications. Recently, several P2P streaming systems have been deployed to provide live and on-demand video streaming services on the Internet at low server cost. In this paper, we provide a survey on the existing P2P solutions for live and on-demand video streaming. Representative P2P streaming systems, including tree, multi-tree and mesh based systems are introduced. We describe the challenges and solutions of providing live and on-demand video streaming in P2P environment. Open research issues on P2P video streaming are also discussed.

Design of fault-tolerant large-scale VOD servers: With emphasis onhigh-performance and low-cost

Recent technological advances in digital signal processing, data compression techniques, and high-speed communication networks have made Video-on-Demand (VOD) servers feasible. A challenging task in such systems is servicing multiple clients simultaneously while satisfying real-time requirements of continuous delivery of objects at specified rates. To accomplish these tasks and realize economies of scale associated with servicing a large user population, a VOD server requires a large disk subsystem. Although a single disk is fairly reliable, a large disk farm can have an unacceptably high probability of disk failure. Furthermore, due to real-time constraints, the reliability requirements of VOD systems are even more stringent than those of traditional information systems. Traditional RAID solutions are inadequate due to poor resource usage. Thus, in this paper, we present alternative schemes which provide a high degree of reliability at low disk storage, bandwidth, and memory costs for on-demand multimedia servers. Moreover, we discuss some of the main issues and trade-offs associated with providing fault tolerance in multidisk VOD systems. We would like to impress upon the reader that one of the main points of this paper is the exposition of trade-offs and issues associated with designing fault-tolerant VOD servers. It is not the case that one fault tolerance scheme is absolutely better than another, but rather that one must understand the trade-offs as well as one's system constraints and then choose a fault tolerance scheme accordingly     

基于Telnet的节目分送系统的设计原理与实现

ＶＯＤ技术是当前多媒体应用技术中的一项热点技术,节目分送子系统的目标是根据节目排程自动把省中心视频服务器节目及相应的资料下载到地市州视频服务器中,在简介ＶＯＤ系统的基础上,主要讨论了节目分送系统的原理与实现。     

Performance of batching schemes for multimedia-on-demand services

Recent advances in information and communication technologies have made multimedia-on-demand services technically and economically feasible. Important aspects of such systems are the resource sharing techniques, which allow the simultaneous service of a large number of users with considerable savings in terms of network bandwidth and server resources. In this paper, we report the results of a study which analyzes batching and buffering techniques, which involves serving all video requests issued during a short interval of time with a single stream. The mathematical model, based on queueing networks, allows the evaluation of the main system performance (average and probability distribution of the number of streams, percentage reduction of resources, and so on) as a function of load and batching interval duration. Simulation experiments confirm the analytical model in the whole range of considered conditions.     

Threshold-Based Dynamic Replication in Large-Scale Video-on-Demand Systems

Recent advances in high speed networking technologies and video compression techniques have made Video-on-Demand (VOD) services feasible. A large-scale VOD system imposes a large demand on I/O bandwidth and storage resources, and therefore, parallel disks are typically used for providing VOD service. Although striping of movie data across a large number of disks can balance the utilization among these disks, such a striping technique can exhibit additional complexity, for instance, in data management, such as synchronization among disks during data delivery, as well as in supporting fault tolerant behavior. Therefore, it is more practical to limit the extent of data striping, for example, by arranging the disks in groups (or nodes) and then allowing intra-group (or intra-node) data striping only. With multiple striping groups, however, we may need to assign a movie to multiple nodes so as to satisfy the total demand of requests for that movie. Such an approach gives rise to several design issues, including: (1) what is the right number of copies of each movie we need so as to satisfy the demand and at the same time not waste storage capacity, (2) how to assign these movies to different nodes in the system, and (3) what are efficient approaches to altering the number of copies of each movie (and their placement) when the need for that arises. In this paper, we study an approach to dynamically reconfiguring the VOD system so as to alter the number of copies of each movie maintained on the server as the access demand for these movies fluctuates. We propose various approaches to addressing the above stated issues, which result in a VOD design that is adaptive to the changes in data access patterns. Performance evaluation is carried out to quantify the costs and the performance gains of these techniques.     

Issues in the design of a storage server for video-on-demand

We examine issues related to the design of a storage server for video-on-demand (VOD) applications. The storage medium considered is magnetic disks or arrays of disks. We investigate disk scheduling policies, buffer management policies and I/O bus protocol issues. We derive the number of sessions that can be supported from a single disk or an array of disks and determine the amount of buffering required to support a given number of users. Furthermore, we propose a scheduling mechanism for disk accesses that significantly lowers the buffer-size requirements in the case of disk arrays. The buffer size required under the proposed scheme is independent of the number of disks in the array. This property allows for striping video content over a large number of disks to achieve higher concurrency in access to a particular video object. This enables the server to satisfy hundreds of independent requests to the same video object or to hundreds of different objects while storing only one copy of each video object. The reliability implications of striping content over a large number of disks are addressed and two solutions are proposed. Finally, we examine various policies for dealing with disk thermal calibration and the placement of videos on disks and disk arrays.     

CBC: Caching for cloud-based VOD systems

Cloud-based video on demand (VOD) service is a promising next-generation media streaming service paradigm. Being a resource-intensive application, how to maximize resource utilization is a key issue of designing such an application. Due to the special cloud-based VOD system architecture consisting of cloud storage cluster and media server cluster, existing techniques such as traditional caching strategies are inappropriate to be adopted by a cloud-based VOD system directly in practice. Therefore, in this study, we have proposed a systemic caching scheme, which seamlessly integrates a caching algorithm and a cache deployment algorithm together to maximize the resources utilization of cloud-based VOD system. Firstly, we have proposed a cloud-based caching algorithm. The algorithm models the cloud-based VOD system as a multi-constraint optimization problem, so as to balance the resource utilization between cloud storage cluster and media server cluster. Secondly, we have proposed a cache deployment algorithm. The algorithm further manages the bandwidth and cache space resource utilization inside the media server cluster in a more fine-grained manner, and achieves load balancing performance. Our evaluation results show that the proposed scheme enhances the resource utilization of the cloud-based VOD system under resource-constrained situation, and cuts down the reject ratio of user requests.