File allocation in distributed multimedia information networks

We study allocation problems of multimedia files in distributed network systems. In these systems, the files are shared by users connected with different servers through high-speed communication networks. One of the most important problems in distributed systems is how to assign the files to servers in view of costs and delays. In these systems, it is obvious that there is a trading-off relationship between costs and delays. Our objective is to find the optimal file allocation such that the total cost is minimized subject to the total delay. In order to evaluate the optimization, we present a system model that can cover a wide range of multimedia network applications such as VoD (video on demand), corporation information networks, and so on. We introduce a 0-1 integer programming formulation for the optimization problem. We find the optimal file allocation by solving these formulae, and quantify the general tendency in distributed systems. Moreover, we make a comparison between the exhaustive search and the approximate method that we use for optimization