Mapping Media Streams onto a Network of Servers

This paper presents the definition as well as a number of methods for the solution of a new combinatorial optimization problem, called S-MAMP that has to be solved for the efficient management of a network of media servers. This network of servers can be implemented on top of a closely connected network of workstations as well as on a wide area network of media servers. The problem studied here addresses the management of media assets on such a network, i.e. the placement/replication of media assets on a network of media servers taking the user requests, storage capacity and bandwidth limitations of the server network into account. The algorithms presented for the solution of the S-MAMP problem make efficient use of the ability of audio/video encoding standards such as MPEG to encode one stream in different bitrates providing scalable service quality to the user in this way.