Channel allocation in true video-on-demand systems

To reduce the huge bandwidth demand of video-on-demand, techniques based on multicast have been considered for the deployment of such services on a large scale. Interactiveness, a desirable feature of video services, encompasses the capability of performing VCR operations. Whenever a viewer issues a VCR operation, his/her video stream unsynchronizes with the stream of his/her multicast group. This paper introduces an approach to determine the number of video channels needed to support interactiveness. Moreover, the performance of interactive systems with reserved pool of channels for the support of VCR operations, as well systems with batching and piggybacking are analysed.