Dr. Darrell Long

Tabbycat: An Inexpensive Scalable Server for Video-on-Demand

Proceedings of the IEEE 2003 International Conference on Communications

May 2003View full paper

Abstract

Tabbycat is a video server prototype demonstrating the benefits of a proactive approach for distributing popular videos on demand to a large customer base. Rather than reacting to individual customer requests, Tabbycat broadcasts the contents of the most popular videos according to a fixed schedule. As a result, the number of customers watching a given video does not affect the cost of distributing it. We found that one workstation with a single ATA disk drive and a Fast Ethernet interface could distribute three two-hour videos while achieving a maximum customer waiting time of less than four minutes.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{thirumalai-procee03,
  author       = {Karthik Thirumalai and Jehan-Fran\c{c}ois P\^aris and Darrell D. E. Long},
  title        = {Tabbycat: An Inexpensive Scalable Server for Video-on-Demand},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the IEEE 2003 International Conference on Communications},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  month        = may,
  year         = {2003}
}
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