Distributed caching mechanism for video on demand on the Internet

Abstract

Video on Demand applications in the Internet are delay sensitive and highly resource intensive applications. Such applications require streaming of large video files in a time bound manner. Because large volume in terms of data and high transmission rate video streaming requires high bandwidth and storage space than data transfer applications. Caching an ongoing stream at an intermediate node between the content server, which provides video on demand service, and the client(s) is a viable solution to save resources. The proposed scheme is such a caching scheme, which caches video content among the intermediate nodes in a distributed manner. The streams are cached among the dynamically selected caching nodes and the clients are served the video content from these nodes. The caching nodes contact each other and collaboratively act together to provide the service. The scheme also proposes a heuristic to estimate resource requirements for the video on demand systems. The behavior of the scheme is demonstrated through simulation. The quality of service using the proposed scheme is compared with some of the existing schemes.