A Server-less Architecture for Building Scalable, Reliable, and Cost-Effective Video-on-demand Systems

Video-on-demand (VoD) 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 VoD systems, researchers have spent considerable effort in designing scalable, reliable, and cost-effective video servers. Nevertheless, a video server can only have finite capacity. As the system scales up, the server will need to be upgraded and this can become very expensive as the system scales beyond thousands of users. In this study, we investigate a radically different architecture where the bottleneck video server, is eliminated altogether. Specifically, this peer-to-peer, server-less architecture relies on the client machines for distributed data storage and delivery. A client initiating a new streaming session will first locate other clients where the requested stream is stored, and then requests delivery of the stream directly from those clients instead of from a central server. This fully distributed architecture is inherently scalable as the storage and delivery capacity grows with the number of clients in the system. Additionally, we develop fault-tolerance algorithms for the system so that stream delivery can be maintained even if some of the clients fail.