Multimedia servers-design and performance

Examines multimedia servers that are used to store and play back large quantities of data for a large number of simultaneous users. Data files tend to be very long and are presented in the form of streams which must be maintained in synchronism with the display. The authors describe a generalized multimedia server architecture which consists of a distributed network of storage elements, control elements and network interface elements interconnected with a wideband switch fabric. They then describe a number of strategies for allocating video files to the storage elements in this server architecture and present the results of computer simulations describing the performance of the server under different assumptions of user demand.