Multimedia Servers: Applications, Environments and Design

This book will undoubtedly satisfy the needs of application developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers, as it provides end-to-end, top-down coverage: from application-specific issues to low-level components. Inside, the authors offer specific design, development, and implementation approaches that take into account the complexity of the environments in which multimedia servers operate. You'll learn which techniques are best suited for different kinds of applications and different kinds of networks. You'll master the challenges associated with resource scheduling, collaborative computing, session set-up, and distributed storage. Most importantly, you'll discover how to put all of these solutions to work as part of a coherent strategy aimed at exploiting economies of scale and meeting quality of service requirements.

* Presents optimized design algorithms developed by the authors and other leading researchers.
* Deals comprehensively with the systems supporting the large-scale storage, retrieval, and distribution of audio and video data.
* Balances the coverage of current technologies with forward-looking discussions to help you devise a sustainable, evolvable solution.
* Covers key issues in video-on-demand and other multimedia systems: resource scheduling, local caching, interactivity, architectural strategies, and more.

This book will undoubtedly satisfy the needs of application developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers, as it provides end-to-end, top-down coverage: from application-specific issues to low-level components. Inside, the authors offer specific design, development, and implementation approaches that take into account the complexity of the environments in which multimedia servers operate. You'll learn which techniques are best suited for different kinds of applications and different kinds of networks. You'll master the challenges associated with resource scheduling, collaborative computing, session set-up, and distributed storage. Most importantly, you'll discover how to put all of these solutions to work as part of a coherent strategy aimed at exploiting economies of scale and meeting quality of service requirements. Presents optimized design algorithms developed by the authors and other leading researchers.

This book is a clear and comprehensive survey of multimedia system design for a networked world. It's also a perfect companion for multimedia server designers as well as the multimedia application developer ... or anyone building the 'best of breed' products and services that scale to the Internet.

Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO

Novell, Inc.

This is a book on an extremely timely subject. With coming broadband access to the home, there will be an explosion in demand for multimedia streaming applications. This book will be a "must" read for anyone designing the servers that will support them.

Don Towsley, Dept. of Computer Science

University of Massachusetts- Amherst

This book will undoubtedly satisfy the needs of application developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers, as it provides end-to-end, top-down coverage: from application-specific issues to low-level components. Inside, the authors offer specific design, development, and implementation approaches that take into account the complexity of the environments in which multimedia servers operate. You'll learn which techniques are best suited for different kinds of applications and different kinds of networks. You'll master the challenges associated with resource scheduling, collaborative computing, session set-up, and distributed storage. Most importantly, you'll discover how to put all of these solutions to work as part of a coherent strategy aimed at exploiting economies of scale and meeting quality of service requirements.

Features

• Presents optimized design algorithms developed by the authors and other leading researchers.
  
• Deals comprehensively with the systems supporting the large-scale storage, retrieval, and distribution of audio and video data.
  
• Balances the coverage of current technologies with forward-looking discussions to help you devise a sustainable, evolvable solution.
  
• Covers key issues in video-on-demand and other multimedia systems: resource scheduling, local caching, interactivity, architectural strategies, and more.

Booknews

Sitaram, with the Novell company in Bangalore, and Dan, with IBM, have been researching and developing video servers on various IBM platforms. Here they provide detailed information on multimedia servers for applications developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers. They include optimized design algorithms they and others have developed; describe systems supporting the large-scale storage, retrieval, and distribution of audio and video data; and discuss key issues in video-on-demand and other multimedia systems. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dr. Dinkar Sitaram is Director of the Technology Group at Novell, Inc., Bangalore. Previously, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM Research.

Dr. Asit Dan has been with IBM Research since 1990, and is currently leading a group on the development of infrastructure for supporting e-commerce applications.