The use of multicast delivery to provide a scalable and interactive video-on-demand service

Abstract

In typical proposals for Video-On-Demand (VOD) systems, customers are serviced individually by allocating and dedicating a transmission channel and a set of server resources to each customer. This approach leads to an expensive-to-operate, non-scalable system. We consider a VOD system that uses multicast delivery to service multiple customers with a single set of resources. The use of multicast communication requires that part of the on-demand nature of the system be sacri ced to achieve scalability and cost-e ectiveness. One drawback to using multicast communication is that it complicates the provision of interactive VCR-style functions. Interactivity can be provided by either increasing the complexity of the customer set-top box or by modifying the semantics of the interactive functions to make them easier to provide. We describe a framework and mechanisms by which such interactive functions can be incorporated into a multicast delivery VOD system. Through the use of simulation, we evaluate and compare the performance of a unicast VOD system and multicast VOD systems o ering various levels of interactivity.

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