Interactivity in Video-on-Demand Systems

Abstract

The delivery of constant quality compressed video requires that the network adapt to large fluctuations in bandwidth. We have shown that bandwidth smoothing techniques are effective in removing burstiness, making network resource scheduling simpler. In this chapter, we describe how critical bandwidth based smoothing techniques affect the underlying services in an interactive video-on-demand service. As previously mentioned, the benefits of smoothing for live video applications are constrained by the requirement that latency remain low between video capture and video playback. Stored video applications, on the other hand, can schedule the network bandwidth resources well in advance of the playback of the video. The use of in-advance reservations in such bandwidth smoothing schemes, however, has implications on the ability to provide users with familiar video cassette recorder (VCR) functionality such as stop, pause, rewind, and fast forward.