Cache transparency in VOD systems: taking advantage of viewers' flexibility

The architecture of the Berkeley distributed hierarchical video-on-demand (VOD) system consists of continuous media servers basically standing as a cache between the archive servers and the clients. In this paper, we first describe the features of a new cache management algorithm called AVBB (Adaptive Viewers, Bias-Based). With the firm belief that some video viewers can settle for a video other than their first choice, we then propose making the cache transparent of its video contents to the viewers as a technique to improve cache performance. Finally, we evaluate the improvement which cache transparency brings to AVBB.