Stochastic Model Based Proxy Servers Architecture for VoD to Achieve Reduced Client Waiting Time

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel three-layer proxy server architecture with dynamic caching and load sharing to significantly reduce client waiting time in Video on Demand systems.

Contribution

It introduces a new three-layer architecture with an efficient caching and load sharing algorithm tailored to regional video popularity.

Findings

Lower client waiting time compared to existing algorithms

Effective cache allocation based on regional demand

Improved system performance demonstrated through simulations

Abstract

In a video on demand system, the main video repository may be far away from the user and generally has limited streaming capacities. Since a high quality video's size is huge, it requires high bandwidth for streaming over the internet. In order to achieve a higher video hit ratio, reduced client waiting time, distributed server's architecture can be used, in which multiple local servers are placed close to clients and, based on their regional demands video contents are cached dynamically from the main server. As the cost of proxy server is decreasing and demand for reduced waiting time is increasing day by day, newer architectures are explored, innovative schemes are arrived at. In this paper we present novel 3 layer architecture, includes main multimedia server, a Tracker and Proxy servers. This architecture targets to optimize the client waiting time. We also propose an efficient prefix caching and load sharing algorithm at the proxy server to allocate the cache according to regional popularity of the video. The simulation results demonstrate that it achieves significantly lower client's waiting time, when compared to the other existing algorithms.