A hybrid pagoda broadcasting protocol: fixed-delay pagoda broadcasting protocol with partial preloading

Abstract

Broadcasting protocols offer an efficient and scalable method to provide video-on-demand. We present a new broadcasting protocol that assumes that some portions of the video are already preloaded in the set-top-box (STB), and at the same time, requires the user to wait for a fixed-delay before viewing. As a result, there is a trade-off between the size of the consumed local storage, user waiting time, and bandwidth consumption. This trade-off makes this protocol very flexible, in that we can control the consumption of one resource by adjusting the use of the other two. Also, the performance of the proposed protocol is not very far from the theoretical minimum. We also present a heuristic version of the protocol, in which the performance is improved a little.