A distributed media server management scheme

In a distributed multimedia system, the distribution of digitized video, audio or other type of streamed data presents problems in both data communications and management of media servers. The system should be able to serve users in a wide geographical area and to adapt itself to a varying number of users. We propose an Internet-based management scheme for a media server system, assembled by a variable number of media servers geographically dispersed, where user requests are directed dynamically to an appropriate server according to their location and served in a unicast way. The scalability of the system is based on multicast type of negotiation between servers and shifting the management of content and load from centralized gateway to the servers.