Performance results on scheduling algorithms for broadcast information delivery systems

The concept of a broadcast information delivery system has been around since the early 1980s-- with Videotex and Teletex being two key examples. A broadcast information delivery system simply supplies information (or data) in the form of pages to customers who request them. The broadcast component allows multiple customers requesting the same page to be satisfied with the same page broadcast. Over the last 10 years, there has tremendous increase in the speed and capacity of computer networks which make the idea of broadcast information delivery systems that much more attractive. Intranets, LANs, and the V/WW are three forums for such a system. In this paper, we examine several scheduling algorithms in an attempt to minimize the mean response time of page requests for the customers.