ITR: An Infrastructure for the Real-Time Delivery of High Quality Continuous Media from Distributed Scalable Servers to Multiple Clients

一个可扩展的实时流媒体体系结构的设计、实现和评估使几个大规模的IT应用成为可能。大量的实时数据被在线存储、维护和检索。实时媒体的流行例子包括视频和音频，而不太熟悉的例子是触觉和化身数据。由于缺乏可扩展的服务器体系结构以及缺少全局资源管理协议，当前基于互联网的基础设施不能支持非常高质量(兆比特每秒)媒体的实时端到端递送。在现实设置中对我们的体系结构的评估是集成我们先前成功的三个研究项目的目标：1)分布式实时文件服务器(RTFS)，2)冗余分层互连体系结构(REDHI)，3)利用客户端资源提高个人RTFS利用率的Super-Streaming模式，该架构对服务器设计和在线多媒体内容都有影响。此外，这种基础设施的实现使视频点播、新闻点播、远程学习以及科学探索和可视化等大规模应用成为可能。这些应用反过来将促进教学、培训和学习，并增进对科学技术的理解。

Several large-scale IT applications are enabled by the design, implementation and evaluation of a scalable real-time streaming media architecture. Large volumes of real-time data are stored, maintained, and retrieved online. Popular examples of real-time media include video and audio, while less familiar examples are haptic and avatar data. The real-time end-to-end delivery of very high quality (megabits per second) media cannot be supported with the current Internet-based infrastructure due to the lack of a scalable server architecture as well as a missing global resource management protocol.The evaluation of our architecture in a realistic setup is the objective of integrating three of our previous successful research projects: 1) a distributed real-time file server (RTFS), 2) a redundant hierarchical interconnect architecture (RedHi), and 3) the Super-streaming paradigm to improve individual RTFS utilization by using client side resources.The impact of this architecture is on both the server design as well as the online multimedia content. Furthermore, the realization of such an infrastructure is enabling large scale applications such as video-on-demand, news-on-demand, distance learning and scientific exploration and visualization. These applications, in turn, will be promoting teaching, training, and learning as well as enhancing scientific and technological understanding.