Modeling and simulation of the performance of distributed video services

To characterize the potential performance of servers regarding their services (e.g. for comparison issues) we need to extract the essential features of the underlying networks. Two network models are presented which serve as base for performance evaluation of VoD servers. The first one is a formal model focusing on LANs which contains mathematical functions characterizing the infrastructure and possible throughput of a server. The second one is part of a simulation environment which enables the comparison of video servers. At the end of the paper, a short summary of a performance study is presented as a demonstration which introduces some network related metrics as well.