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Single Pair of Buffers: Reducing memory requirements in VBR media servers

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Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecommunication Services (IDMS 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1483))

Abstract

Most Video-on-Demand scheduling models are focused on the optimization of disk and network utilization, paying less attention to memory management. In this paper we present, analyze and evaluate a new buffering policy, namely Single Pair of Buffers, which greatly reduces Video-on-Demand server memory requirements when used in combination with any cycle-based scheduling algorithm. This technique is based on the synchronization of a single pair of buffers per storage device, as opposed to existing solutions based on per-stream buffering allocation. The influence of factors such as Variable Bit Rate streams, zoned disks, network speed and cycle length has been considered in detail. Extensive simulation results show that Single Pair of Buffers leads to more than one order of magnitude memory reduction when compared to the popular double-buffering approach, at a cost of a minor (less than 2% in the worst case) performance degradation.

This research was supported in part by the National R&D Program of Spain, Project Number TIC97-0438.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento Electrónica y Sistemas, Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio, Madrid, Spain

    Alberto García-Martínez

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachussetts, Amherst, MA, USA

    JesÚs Fernández-Conde

  3. Departamento de Electrónica y Sistemas, Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    ángel Viña

Authors
  1. Alberto García-Martínez
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  2. JesÚs Fernández-Conde
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  3. ángel Viña
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Thomas Plagemann Vera Goebel

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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García-Martínez, A., Fernández-Conde, J., Viña, á. (1998). Single Pair of Buffers: Reducing memory requirements in VBR media servers. In: Plagemann, T., Goebel, V. (eds) Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecommunication Services. IDMS 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1483. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055328

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055328

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64955-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49914-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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