GloVE: A distributed environment for scalable Video-on-Demand systems

In this paper, we introduce a scalable Video-on-Demand (VoD) system called GloVE (Global Video Environment) in which active clients cooperate to create a shareable video cache that is used as the primary source of video content for subsequent client requests. In this way, GloVE server's bandwidth does not limit the number of simultaneous clients that can playback a certain video since that as long as its content is stored in the cooperative video cache (CVC), new requests for the video can be serviced from CVC thus alleviating the demand on the VoD server. In addition, the GloVE's peer-to-peer model allows the use of low-cost PCs as video servers besides requiring no multicast capability and transmitting videos stored in any well-defined format. Our experimental results show that GloVE-based servers are capable of delivering popular videos at prime time in a scalable way to large audiences.