Response time driven multimedia data objects allocation for browsing documents in distributed environments

Distributed information processing, in many world wide web applications, re quires access, transfer. and synchronization of large multimedia data objec ts (MDOs) (such as, audio, video, and images) across the communication netw ork, Moreover, the end users have started expecting very fast response time s and high quality of service. Since the transfer of large MDOs across the communication network contributes to the response time observed by the end users, the problem of allocating these MDOs so as to minimize the response time becomes very challenging. This problem becomes more complex in the con text of hypermedia documents (web pages), wherein the MDOs need to be synch ronized during presentation to the end users. Note that the basic problem o f data allocation in distributed database environments is NP-complete. Ther efore, there is a need to pursue and evaluate solutions based on heuristics which generate near-optimal MDO allocation. In this paper, we address this problem by: 1)conceptualizing this problem by using a navigational model t o represent hypermedia documents and their access behavior from end users, and by capturing the synchronization requirements on MDOs, 2) formulating t he problem by developing a base case cost model for response time, and gene ralizing it to incorporate user interaction and buffer memory constraints, 3) designing two algorithms to find near-optimal solutions for allocating M DOs of the hypermedia documents while adhering to the synchronization requi rements, and 4) evaluating the trade-off between the time complexity to get the solution and the quality of solution by comparing the solutions genera ted by the algorithms with the optimal solutions generated through an exhau stive search.