ON THE DESIGN OF A LOW-COST VIDEO-ON-DEMAND STORAGE-SYSTEM

Recent advances in storage technology, coupled with the dramatic incre ase in the bandwidth of networks, now make it possible to provide ''vi deo-on-demand'' service to viewers. A video-on-demand server is a comp uter system that stores videos in compressed digital form and provides support for various portions of compressed video data to be accessed and transmitted concurrently. We present a low-cost storage architectu re for a video-on-demand server that relies principally on disks. The high bandwidths of disks in conjunction with a clever strategy for str iping videos on them enables simultaneous access and transmission of p ortions of a video, separated by fixed time intervals. We also present schemes for implementing VCR-like functions including fast forward, r ewind, and pause, and extend our schemes to the case in which videos h ave different rate requirements.