Server-less Video Streaming

Server-less Video Streaming Systems

Project Description
Video streaming systems have traditionally been built around the client-server architecture where a video server stores compressed video for delivery to clients connected by a network. With increasing demand for large-scale video streaming services, researchers have spent considerable effort in designing high-capacity video servers. Nevertheless, a video server can only have finite capacity and the continuous server upgrade can become increasingly more expensive as the system scales up. In this research programme, we investigate a radically different architecture where the bottleneck - video server, is eliminated altogether. This server-less architecture exploits resources in the end-user machines for distributed data storage and video delivery. Thus when new hosts are added to the system, they add resources in addition to workload to the system. This research programme will systematically explore and investigate architectural alternatives for building a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective server-less video streaming system.

Project Funding
This research is partially funded by a Direct Research Grant, Earmarked Research Grant, and the Area of Excellence in Information Technology.

Personnel
PI: Prof. Jack Y. B. Lee
Researchers: W. T. Leung, C. Y. Chan, T. K. Ho, S. C. Hui, K. K. To, and O. L. Sung.

Related Publications

C. Y. Chan and Jack Y. B. Lee, "A Decentralized Scheduler for Distributed Video Streaming in a Server-less Video Streaming System," International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid 2004), Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A, April 19-22, 2004.
T. K. Ho and Jack Y. B. Lee, "A Transpositional Redundant Data Update Algorithm for Growing Server-less Video Streaming Systems," Proc. IEEE Third International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P2003), Linköping, Sweden, Sep 1-3, 2003.
C. Y. Chan and Jack Y. B. Lee, "On Transmission Scheduling in a Server-less Video-on-Demand System," Proc. International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing (Euro-Par), Klagenfurt, Austria, August 26-29, 2003.
T. K. Ho and Jack Y. B. Lee, "A Novel Redundant Data Update Algorithm for Fault-Tolerant Server-less Video-on-Demand Systems," Proc. 2003 High Performance & Large Scale Computing (HP&LSC) Conference, Nottingham, UK, June 9-11, 2003.
T. K. Ho and Jack Y. B. Lee, "A Row-Permutated Data Reorganization Algorithm for Server-less Video-on-Demand Systems," Proc. International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid) 2003, Tokyo, Japan, May 12-15, 2003.
Jack Y. B. Lee and W. T. Leung, "Design and Analysis of a Fault-Tolerant Mechanism for a Server-Less Video-On-Demand System," Proc. 2002 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Taiwan, Dec 17-20, 2002.
Jack Y. B. Lee and W. T. Leng, "Study of a Server-less Architecture for Video-on-Demand Applications," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo., Lausanne, Switzerland, 26-29 August 2002, pp.233-236.
W. T. Leung and Jack Y. B. Lee, "A Server-less Architecture for Building Scalable, Reliable, and Cost-Effective Video-on-demand Systems," Internet2 Workshop on Collaborative Computing in Higher Education: Peer-to-Peer and Beyond, Tempe, AZ, USA, 30-31 Jan 2002.