A simple low-bandwidth broadcasting protocol for video-on-demand

Broadcasting protocols can reduce the cost of video-on-demand services by using much less bandwidth to transmit videos that are simultaneously watched by many viewers. Unfortunately, the most efficient broadcasting protocols are also the most difficult to implement because they allocate a multitude of very low bandwidth streams to each video. We present a protocol that uses between three and seven high-bandwidth streams per video and never requires more than five percent more bandwidth than any other protocol to guarantee a given average waiting time.