Simple VBR staircase broadcasting (SVSB)

One way to broadcast a popular video is to partition the video into segments, which are broadcast on several streams periodically. The approach lets multiple users share streams; thus, the stress on scarce bandwidth can be alleviated without sacrificing viewers' waiting time. One representative approach is the staircase broadcasting (SB) scheme, which can broadcast a video using multiple streams by having new viewers wait no longer than /spl theta/(L/N) time, where L is the length of a video, and N is the number of segments. In comparison with other segmented schemes, the SB scheme requires a smaller disk buffer and lower disk transfer rate. However, the scheme mainly supports transmission of CBR-encoded videos. We propose a simple VBR staircase broadcasting (SVSB) scheme, which supports VBR-encoded videos and its bandwidth requirements are constant. Some bounds on the bandwidth consumption, the buffer requirements, and the required disk transfer rate are also developed. Experimental results indicate that the SVSB scheme outperforms the variable bandwidth harmonic broadcasting (VBHB) scheme on maximum buffer requirements, and maximum required disk transfer rate.