The relative simplicity of access to digital communications nowadays a
nd the simultaneous increase in the available bandwidth are leading to
the definition of new telematic services, mainly oriented towards mul
timedia applications and interactivity with the user. In the near futu
re, a decisive role will be played in this scenario by the providers o
f interactive multimedia services of the on-demand type, which will gu
arantee the end user a high degree of flexibility, speed and efficienc
y. In this paper, some of the technical aspects regarding these servic
e providers are dealt with, paying particular attention to the problem
s of storing information and managing service requests. More specifica
lly, the paper presents and evaluates a new storage technique based on
the use of disk array technology, which can manage both typical multi
media connections and traditional requests. The proposed architecture
is based on the joint use of the partial dynamic declustering and the
information dispersal algorithm, which are employed for the allocation
and retrieval of the data stored on the disk array. We also define ef
ficient strategies for request management in such a way as to meet the
time constraints imposed by multimedia sessions and guarantee good re
sponse times for the rest of the traffic. The system proposed is then
analyzed using a simulation approach.