A Portable Communication System for Video-on-Demand Applications using the Existing Infrastructure - INFOCOM '96. Fifteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer Societies. 'Networking the Nex

Video o n demand (VOD) sys t ems are becoming popular. T h e y have special requirements for receiving VOD data steadily, but c o m m o n general communicat ion protocols canno t m e e t the ir requirements. Several n e w protocols have been designed t o fulfill th i s service requirem e n t , bu t it takes a long t i m e f o r a protocol t o be supported f r o m end t o end . W e propose a VOD communicat ion sy s t em that is implemented as a n user-level library o n top of a comm o n existing protocol. Th i s protocol is easy t o port, and the level of connectivity i s a lmos t the s a m e as in the underlying existing protocol. W e describe the impor tant po in ts related t o its implementa t ion , such as t h e low overhead of imp lemen ta t ion and t h e p o w control mechan i sm. W e implemented a prototype sys tem, measured its performance, and concluded tha t implemen t ing a communica t ion s y s t e m as a user-level library enables us t o imp lemen t a VOD portable communicat i o n s y s t e m wi th a practical level of performance.