Search

Community networks can provide the geographical advantage to cover and connect community members. In addition, it is more beneficial to share HD-quality content among those community members via the community networks. Recently, we have proposed a Personal video recorder (PVR)--based community network based on the multiple-loop Fiber Channel Arbitration Loop (FC-AL) connection, which can provide the scalability without using expensive FC-AL switches. As a community network size grows, however, popular programs tend to be stored redundantly in many PVRs, thereby wasting the storage space that could otherwise be used to store additional TV programs. Thus, we propose how to extend program storage hours in a community network by presenting storage saving algorithms for both PVRs and network disks. Through extensive simulations, we finally show that our schemes significantly extend program storage hours by an average of 69.7%. Index Terms--Personal Video Recorders, Storage saving schemes, Scalable content sharing architecture, FC-AL multiple loops, Community networks

Integrated with consumer devices like PVRs, a community network can serve as a content sharing architecture for high-quality TV programs in a residential area. To build up such a community network, we employ Fiber Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) as a fast network connecting a large number of PVRs at a low cost. However, an FC-AL single loop has a critical limitation in terms of the number of attached PVRs when connecting thousands of users in densely-populated communities. We therefore develop a novel multiple loop architecture capable of providing a scalable community network in an economical way without using expensive switches. To connect multiple loops in our architecture, we introduce shared disks that relay TV programs between loops. We then present all possible topologies including linear, ring, edge-added, and complete topology that can be configured with shared disks. We also analyze which topology has the best scalability by evaluating the total traffic of each topology. The analysis and experimental results show that the complete topology among all the possible topologies provides the best scalability. Index Terms--Personal Video Recorders, Scalable content sharing architecture, Community networks, FC-AL multiple loops

Recent advances in storage and networking technology are rapidly changing users' TV viewing patterns. Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) enable people to watch what they want when they want by recording TV programs into local disks. In addition, PVRs can easily share TV contents over peer-to-peer networks once they are equipped with broadband connections. However, the current broadband bandwidth makes it difficult to support HD-quality TV content streaming on the Internet. In this paper, we propose a novel HD-quality streaming architecture for real-time broadcast content distribution. We develop two efficient scheduling schemes, matching a communication pair and switching /replication for system load-balancing, to further utilize network and disk bandwidth. We also evaluate buffer requirement to continue storing time-shifted programs without missing any broadcast data. By extensive simulation experiments, we show the effect of our proposed schemes and time-shifting policy (1). Index Terms--TV content distribution network, HD-quality data streaming, P2P networking, Personal Video Recorders