A low-cost/high-performance server for video on demand

In this paper a prototype of a distributed video-on-demand server is presented. The technical aspects regarding the realization of this kind of service provider are dealt with, paying particular attention to exploiting the architecture the system is based on. The proposed system easily allows, in any broadband local network environment, the realization of a low-cost/high-performance distributed video server, through the clustering of the local workstations. The system has been implemented and tested, and the results of its performance and scalability are presented in the final sections of this paper.