Dynamic coordination of movies according to popularity index and resource availability within a hierarchical VOD system

We have designed and implemented a video on demand (VOD) system over heterogeneous wide area networks (WAN). The hierarchical architecture is an effective way to build such a system. One of the most important and still open issues in a hierarchical VOD system is how to arrange system resources for better performance corresponding to various applications. Our approach is to coordinate movie files dynamically according to their popularity index and resource availability. We present our system and protocol designs to support the dynamic coordination. We also describe our experimental results. Our approach gives a practical solution to VOD services on current network architecture such as the Internet.