6283537
A bandwidth management technique for hierarchical storage in large-scale multimedia servers
Using magnetic disks as a cache for tertiary storage has been shown to be an effective way to address the high storage coats of large-scale multimedia servers. The authors investigate a technique for managing the bandwidth of such a hierarchical storage design. In existing schemes, all data items are treated equally; and the same I/O rate is used to load data from tertiary storage when they are requested. In their approach, different loading rates are used for data items with different characteristics. For frequently used items, one keeps a large percentage of data in the disk buffer and needs to use only a small I/O rate to load the missing portions on demand. On the contrary, a larger portion of less frequently used items is kept in the tertiary storage. To minimize their access latencies, larger I/O rates are used to load the missing parts when these items are needed. They formally prove that this approach is better than using the same loading rate for all data items. They also show simulation results to quantitatively demonstrate the benefits of the technique. They confirm that the scheme is able to provide higher system throughput while ensuring very short latencies (i.e., several seconds) for essentially all accesses. Such good performance is achieved using surprisingly small disk space (i.e., about 5% or less of the database size).
7304743
Proxy ecology - cooperative proxies with artificial life
In this paper, we propose a novel P2P cooperative proxy cache system using an individual-based model. We borrow the idea from an ecological system as well as economic systems to manage the cooperative proxies through data and information exchange among individual proxies. The data flow among proxy nodes creates artificial life for the cooperative proxies. The proxy servers with artificial life can automatically configure themselves into a virtual proxy graph. The aggregate effect of caching actions by individual peer proxies automatically distributes the Web document closer to the clients and balances the workload. Our simulation results show that the proposed proxy caching scheme tremendously improves the system performance. In addition, the individual-based design model ensures the simplicity and scalability of the cache system.
54104798
Data allocation algorithms for distributed video servers
14997765
2PSM: an efficient framework for searching video information in a limited-bandwidth environment
Abstract. We present a novel technique, called 2-Phase Service Model, for streaming videos to home users in a limited-bandwidth environment. This scheme first delivers some number of non-adjacent data fragments to the client in Phase 1. The missing fragments are then transmitted in Phase 2 as the client is playing back the video. This approach offers many benefits. The isochronous bandwidth required for Phase 2 can be controlled within the capability of the transport medium. The data fragments received during Phase 1 can be used to provide an excellent preview of the video. They can also be used to facilitate VCR-style operations such as fast-forward and fast-reverse. Systems designed based on this method are less expensive because the fast-forward and fast-reverse versions of the video files are no longer needed. Eliminating these files also improves system performance because mapping between the regular files and their fast-forward and fast-reverse versions is no longer part of the VCR operations. Furthermore, since each client machine handles its own VCR-style interaction, this technique is very scalable. We provide simulation results to show that 2-Phase Service Model is able to handle VCR functions efficiently. We also implement a video player called {\em FRVplayer}. With this prototype, we are able to judge that the visual quality of the previews and VCR-style operations is excellent. These features are essential to many important applications. We discuss the application of FRVplayer in the design of a video management system, called VideoCenter. This system is intended for Internet applications such as digital video libraries.
42282919
Exploring Local Community Structures in Large Networks
In this paper, we extend the concept of degree from single vertex to sub-graph, and present a formal definition of module/community in a network based on this extension. A new locally optimized algorithm is designed to find the module for a given source vertex in a network. Our analysis shows that the complexity of this algorithm is O(K2d), where K is the number of vertices to be explored in the sub-graph and d is the average degree of the vertices in the sub-graph. Based on this algorithm, we implement a JAVA tool, MoNet, for exploring local community structures in large networks. Using this tool to analyze a co-purchase network from Amazon shows that there are local community structures in this network. Further analyses on these local community structures demonstrate that media items are much easier to form compact local modules than book items do, indicating that recommending digital media items to customers based on co-purchasing information in the online store will be more efficient than recommending books.
9138036
Earthworm: a network memory management technique for large-scale distributed multimedia applications
The two main operating constraints of today's multimedia servers are the I/O bandwidth and communication bandwidth limitations. Both of these problems are addressed in this paper using a novel technique called Earthworm. In this scheme, the network memory is used as a huge cache for buffering multimedia data. Dramatic reduction in the demand on the I/O bandwidth, therefore, can be achieved. This scheme also chains display stations to allow them to forward video streams. This strategy eliminates the congestion at the communication port of the server. Removing this bottleneck allows our technique to operate on the vast aggregate bandwidth of the WAN rather than being constrained by the very limited local bandwidth available to the server. A unique feature of the Earthworm approach is that every display station using the server attempts to make some contribution to the caching space and communication bandwidth. The arrival of a new request, therefore, can be seen as a contributor, rather than just a burden to the server. This characteristic ensures the scalability of our design to support very large multimedia applications.
29234559
Quasi-abelian cayley graphs and parsons graphs
LetGbe a finite group, andSa subset ofGwith 1?SandS-1=S.IfSis a union of conjugacy classes ofG,then the Cayley graphX=Cay(G, S)onGwith respect toSis calledquasi-abelian.In this paper we prove that any connected quasi-abelian Cayley graph is hamiltonian (Theorem 2). As a consequence, we prove that Zaks' three conjectures on Parsons graphs are true, with one exception.
17726002
Average-case completeness of a word problem for groups
This paper presents a bounded word problem for groups whose random instances are hard on average. The problem is to decide, when given a finitely presented group G, words ~, y, z, and an integer k, whether (Z–lyZ)Z can be obtained from Z(x–l yz) in G using elementary Tietze transformations for at most k times. We show that the problem is average-case NP-complete when instances are chosen at random under a uniform distribution. NP-completeness of more general bounded word problems for groups is shown as well.
54136036
Region-based retrieval of biomedical images
13491789
Multimedia Support for Wireless W-CDMA with Dynamic Spreading
The emerging multimedia communication needs more support in operating systems in order to be successful over a wireless environment. The system needs to support a seamless integration (i.e., transparent application switching) of voice, audio and conventional data (e.g., e-mails, and ftp). It should also support multiple users with a guaranteed quality. In this paper, we investigate effective protocol design with dynamic spreading factors such that various QoS based on different traffic types can be provided. Increasing spreading factors can benefit the system because it will increase the desired signal strength linearly. The measured bit error rate can be reduced 75 times with a long spreading factor. By taking advantage of this benefit, we propose some middle-ware solutions to monitor the network load and switch the spreading factors dynamically based on the current load with multimedia traffic. These middle-ware solutions are implemented in mobile and base stations and experiments are performed to measure the actual system performance. The preliminary results indicate that our proposed system can always maintain a desired quality for all the voice connections. We further extend our protocol to guarantee a balanced support among different traffic types. While the voice communication is still guaranteed to be non-interrupted, the data traffic is proved to be served with reasonable response time by our proposed system.
15308504
Efficient and accurate Ethernet simulation
The Internet is increasingly being called upon to provide different levels of service to different applications and users. A practical problem in doing so is that although Ethernet is one of the hops for nearby all communication in the Internet, it does not provide any QoS guarantees. A natural question, therefore, is the effect of offered load on Ethernet throughput and delay. In this paper, we present several techniques for accurately and efficiently modeling the behavior of a heavily loaded Ethernet link. We propose an efficient distributed simulation model, called Fast Ethernet Simulation, that empirically models an Ethernet link to quickly and accurately simulate it. By eliminating the implementation of the CSMA/CD protocol, our approach reduces computational complexity drastically while still maintaining desirable accuracy. Performance results show that our techniques not only add very little overhead (less than 5% in our tests) to the basic cost of simulating an Ethernet link, but also closely match real-world measurements. We also present efficient techniques for compressing cumulative distributions using hyperbolic curves and for monitoring the load on a heavily loaded link. Finally, we show applications to illustrate the potential usage of the Fast Ethernet Simulation.