NeTS: Small: Toward All Videos on Demand

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Video-on-demand (VoD) is an attractive service that has already gained popularity in the Internet by allowing users to view a video from a large catalog at any time. A limitation of existing VoD services, both using traditional design as well as P2P is their inability to support efficient streamed access to ALL content at high quality, regardless of demand: not just blockbusters that millions want to see, but also niche content that has relatively small demand in comparison to their highly popular counterparts: re-runs of TV shows, non-blockbuster releases, replays of sporting events, and speeches. The peer-to-peer (P2P) approach is an effective solution for scalable content distribution without imposing a significant burden on a centralized infrastructure. In a P2P-based VoD system, users receive streamed videos from VoD servers as well as from the peers. The ability of peers that are viewing the videos to collaborate with each other reduces the load on serving infrastructure. This project extends the design of successful P2P VoD systems to enable support for efficient delivery of a large, potentially limitless library of high (movie) quality stored VoD. Regardless of a video's popularity, a high-quality version will be playable by any client attached to the network without interruption within seconds of its request. The research utilizes three design principles: leverage P2P technologies, implement altruistic cross-content caching and serving, and utilize playback-point weighted caching strategies. Results include models that describe desirable caching behavior, distributed algorithms to implement the desired caching behavior, and a functional prototype.