Streaming and Broadcasting over the Internet

As the number of people accessing the Internet grows and commerce becomes an important part of the Internet, a desperate need for deployment of scalable and reliable networking technologies arises. The need for scalability is further exacerbated by bandwidth intensive applications using video and audio streaming services. Adding more bandwidth and QoS support to the Internet is one potential remedy for performance problems, but large scale deployment is costly and will take a long time. Recently, a new breed of service providers emerged offering complementary solutions encompassing technologies such as caching, enhanced routing, and load balancing. These providers are mostly called Content Delivery Service Providers (CDSPs). This paper discusses techniques for building enhanced content delivery services over best-effort networks. While the described mechanisms do not assume any specific support from the network, they are also useful in QoS enabled networks to improve network efficiency and user experience. Particular focus is on support for streaming and broadcast services, including architectural design, protocol related issues, and mechanisms for traffic redirection.