Load balancer for high efficient VOD system achieving quick seek

摘要

The quick seek of VOD is vital for a high level of user satisfaction. At the same time, many server resources are required to achieve quick seek of VOD. In this research, to improve the efficiency of VOD system achieving quick seek, we propose a load balancer that clusters two types of servers. The first type is the bursty server to transmit initial video data at high throughput. The second type is the steady server to transmit the remained video data at the video bit-rate. Our load balancer switches the TCP connections from the bursty servers to the steady servers after transmitting initial data. The transmissions of initial video data that need many server resources are aggregated into the bursty servers. This reduces the idling time of the servers and enhances the efficiency of the server resources. We implemented our load balancer into programmable LSI, and confirmed the feasibility of our load balancer in an experimental environment. In addition, we estimated the relationship between the number of servers achieving quick seek within one second and the number of clients connectable to the servers, and we showed that our load balancer could reduce the number of servers by 33–66%. From the estimation, our load balancer is expected to become more efficient as the video bit rate increases.