ITR: An Infrastructure for the Real-Time Delivery of High Quality Continuous Media from Distributed Scalable Servers to Multiple Clients

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Several large-scale IT applications are enabled by the design, implementation and evaluation of a scalable real-time streaming media architecture. Large volumes of real-time data are stored, maintained, and retrieved online. Popular examples of real-time media include video and audio, while less familiar examples are haptic and avatar data. The real-time end-to-end delivery of very high quality (megabits per second) media cannot be supported with the current Internet-based infrastructure due to the lack of a scalable server architecture as well as a missing global resource management protocol. The evaluation of our architecture in a realistic setup is the objective of integrating three of our previous successful research projects: 1) a distributed real-time file server (RTFS), 2) a redundant hierarchical interconnect architecture (RedHi), and 3) the Super-streaming paradigm to improve individual RTFS utilization by using client side resources. The impact of this architecture is on both the server design as well as the online multimedia content. Furthermore, the realization of such an infrastructure is enabling large scale applications such as video-on-demand, news-on-demand, distance learning and scientific exploration and visualization. These applications, in turn, will be promoting teaching, training, and learning as well as enhancing scientific and technological understanding.