Optimal data distribution for heterogeneous parallel storage servers streaming media files

We consider the problem of distributing media files for streaming on a distributed storage network, where servers have heterogeneous capacities and bandwidths. Regarding networking the servers´ bandwidths are the bottlenecks for streaming. We present an algorithm that computes an assignment of n files to m servers for distributing media files such that the streaming speed requirements and capacity constraints are kept. As an additional feature this assignment algorithm works online, i.e. it can assign each file without files to be stored later on. Our algorithm computes the data assignment in time O(nm+mlogm) outperforming linear program solvers.