Multicast Distribution for Multimedia on Demand Services

Recent advances in Information and Communication technologies have made multimedia on demand services technically and economically feasible. An important aspect of such systems is the resource sharing technique, which allow the contemporaneous service of a large number of user requests with a considerable saving in terms of network bandwidth and server resources. In this paper, we report the results of a study which analyzes batching and buffering techniques to group and serve together video requests. The mathematical model allows the evaluation of the main system performance (probability distribution of the number of streams, percentage reduction of resources, etc.) as a function of load and batching interval duration. Simulation experiments confirm the analytical model in the whole range of considered conditions.