DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A MULTIMEDIA STORAGE SERVER FOR MIXED TRAFFIC

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.