Single-path versus multi-path advance reservation in media production networks

In media production, a set of actors works simultaneously on video content from different sources. If the actors are geographically spread, the use of a shared substrate network can improve their collaborative efficiency. In such a network traffic consists mostly of large video files, which need to be transferred respecting strict deadlines. Restrictions on the underlying network can force the use of single-path routing mechanisms over multi-path approaches. In this paper, we investigate the influence of using single-path routing compared to multi-path routing in deadline-aware advance reservation (AR) systems for media production networks. We have modified our previously designed optimal multi-path advance reservation model to incorporate the single-path mechanism and heuristic alternatives are presented and thoroughly evaluated. The experimental results show that the single-path optimal model can only provide satisfactory performance when the network is not in contention. With the heuristic approach, when adequate bandwidth is provided, the multi-path approach outperforms the single-path by up to 7.3%.