Retrieval scheduling for collaborative multimedia presentations

The single-system approach is no longer sufficient to handle the load on po pular Internet servers, especially for those offering extensive multimedia content. Such set-vices have to be replicated to enhance their availability , performance, and reliability. In a highly replicated and available enviro nment, server selection is an important issue. In this paper, we propose an application-layer broker (ALB) for this purpose. ALB employs a content-bas ed, client-centric approach to negotiate with the servers and to identify t he best server for the requested objects. ALB aims to maximize client buffe r utilization in order to efficiently handle dynamic user interactions such as skip, reverse presentation, go back in time. We also present details of a collaborative multimedia presentation platform that we have developed ba sed on ALB.