Multi-server optimal bandwidth monitoring for collaborative distributed retrieval

Accurate bandwidth monitoring is critical for multimedia delivery applications that guarantee QoS parameters like time limit for transmission. In our past work [1] we monitored the bandwidth at several servers independently, then chose the most reliable links to transmit scalable multimedia information. The assumption behind our past. work was that each server retrieves a fixed part of a multimedia object, and this part is determined after the bandwidth monitoring process and cannot be changed during the retrieval process. In this paper, we consider a retrieval strategy where the different servers collaborate in the retrieval process; i.e., if a server finishes its share of the retrieval task it helps with the retrieval task of other servers. Given this "collaborative" retrieval scenario, a new distributed monitoring algorithm is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is more effective than our past work in distributed retrieval.