Bandwidth skimming: a technique for cost-effective video on demand

Derek L. Eager; Mary K. Vernon; John Zahorjan

doi:10.1117/12.373523

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27 December 1999 Bandwidth skimming: a technique for cost-effective video on demand

Derek L. Eager; Mary K. Vernon; John Zahorjan

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Proceedings Volume 3969, Multimedia Computing and Networking 2000; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373523
Event: Electronic Imaging, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

This paper proposes a new technique for on-demand delivery of streaming media. The idea is to hold in reserve, or `skim', a portion of the client reception bandwidth that is sufficiently small that display quality is not impacted significantly, and yet that is nonetheless enough to support substantial reductions in server and network bandwidth through near-optimal hierarchical client stream merging. In this paper we show that this objective is feasible, and we develop practical techniques that achieve it. The results indicate that server and network bandwidth can be reduced to on the order of the logarithm of the number of clients who are viewing the object, using a small `skim' (e.g., 15%) of client reception bandwidth. These low server and network bandwidths are achieved for every media file, while providing immediate service to each client, and without having to pre-load initial portions of the video at each client.

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Derek L. Eager, Mary K. Vernon, and John Zahorjan "Bandwidth skimming: a technique for cost-effective video on demand", Proc. SPIE 3969, Multimedia Computing and Networking 2000, (27 December 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373523

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