GloVE: a distributed environment for low cost scalable VoD systems

In this paper we introduce a scalable Video-on-Demand (VoD) system called GloVE (Global Video Environment) in which active clients cooperate to create a shareable video cache that is used as the primary source of video content for subsequent client requests. In this way, GloVE server´s bandwidth does not limit the number of simultaneous clients that can watch a video since once its content is in the cooperative video cache (CVC) it can be directly transmitted from the cache rather than the VoD server Also, GloVE follows the peer-to-peer approach, allowing the use of low-cost PCs as video servers. In addition, GloVE supports video servers without multicast capability and videos in any stored format. We analyze preliminary performance results of GloVE implemented in a PC server using a Fast Ethernet interconnect and small video buffers at the clients. Our results confirm that while the GloVE-based server uses only a single video channel to deliver a highly popular video simultaneously to N clients, conventional VoD servers require as much as N times more channels.