On Minimizing Startup Latency in Scalable Continuous Media Servers

In a scalable server that supports the retrieval and display of continuous media audio and video clips both the number of simultaneous displays and the expected startup latency of a dis play increases as a function of additional disk bandwidth This paper describes object replication and request migration as two alternative techniques to minimize startup latency In addition to developing analytical models for these two techniques we report on their implementation using a scalable server The results obtained from both the analytical models and the experimental system demonstrate the e ectiveness of the proposed techniques