Design and Implementation of a Caching System for Streaming Media over the Internet

Congested networks and overloaded servers resulting from the ever growing number of Internet users have contributed to the decline in service quality of streaming media over the Internet. We propose a design and implementation of a caching system for streaming media, which utilizes its local memory and disk resources to reduce network and server load, while also improving quality perceived by end users. In particular, request aggregation, prefix caching and rate control mechanisms are used in system design. The effectiveness of the system is validated through performance results from prototype implementation.