A new asynchronous hybrid mechanism for video on demand

We propose a new video on demand strategy that is based on combining two popular approaches, viz., broadcasting and patching. The goal is to maximize the use of broadcasting to effectively share network bandwidth, while patching is used to make up for the apparent lack of time-dependence between user requests. Our strategy matches the performance of a similar strategy reported in the literature recently. Unlike its counterpart, our strategy possesses the property of asynchronicity, which is very crucial in realizing the feasibility of its implementation. We show that our strategy renders itself naturally to meeting the rather difficult requirements of VCR-like functions (pause, rewind, forward etc.). We also identify the significance of an important threshold parameter in satisfying requests at peak loads by accordingly compromising on latency. An analytical model for the VoD system is presented, which is used to thoroughly analyze the performance of the proposed strategy.