File distribution in networks with multimedia storage servers

In this paper, we consider a problem in networks with storage servers for providing multimedia service. The design involves assigning communication link capacity, sizing the multimedia servers, and distributing different types of content at each server, while guaranteeing an upper limit on the individual end‐to‐end blocking probability. We consider alternative methods for obtaining the end‐to‐end blocking probability with low computation time and present optimization procedures to obtain an optimal solution. Under a linear cost structure, our numerical investigations consider different scenarios that might be helpful in understanding how to distribute multimedia content for a cost‐optimized solution. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.