Research Article

Performance evaluation for VBR Continuous Media File Server admission control

  1. D. J. Makaroff1,*,
  2. G. W. Neufeld2,
  3. N. C. Hutchinson2

Article first published online: 12 JUL 2004

DOI: 10.1002/spe.609

Issue

Software: Practice and Experience

Software: Practice and Experience

Volume 34, Issue 12, pages 1187–1210, October 2004

Additional Information

How to Cite

Makaroff, D. J., Neufeld, G. W. and Hutchinson, N. C. (2004), Performance evaluation for VBR Continuous Media File Server admission control. Software: Practice and Experience, 34: 1187–1210. doi: 10.1002/spe.609

Author Information

  1. 1

    Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

  2. 2

    Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

*Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 5AN

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 13 SEP 2004
  2. Article first published online: 12 JUL 2004
  3. Manuscript Revised: 27 JAN 2004
  4. Manuscript Accepted: 27 JAN 2004
  5. Manuscript Received: 18 JUL 2001

Funded by

  • Canadian Institute for Telecommunications Research (CITR)

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Keywords:

  • multimedia;
  • file servers;
  • variable bit rate;
  • admission control;
  • performance evaluation

Abstract

A file server for continuous media must provide resource guarantees and only admit requests that do not violate the resource availability. This paper addresses the admission performance of a server that explicitly considers the variable bit rate nature of the continuous media streams. A prototype version of the server has been implemented and evaluated in several heterogeneous environments. The two system resources for which admission control is evaluated are the disk bandwidth and the network bandwidth. Performance results from both measurement and simulation are shown with respect to different admission methods and varying scenarios of stream delivery patterns. We show that the vbrSim algorithm developed specifically for the server outperforms the other options for disk admission especially with request patterns that have staggered arrivals, while the network admission control algorithm is able to utilize a large percentage of the network bandwidth available. We also show the interactions between the limits of these two resources and how a system can be configured without wasted capacity on either one of the resources. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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