New batching policy for providing true video-on-demand (T-VoD) in multicast system

A new batching policy is proposed for providing true VoD services in multicast VoD systems. Instead of batching the user requests, we serve the new customer with a dedicated stream immediately and then try to merge the customers for the same movie in progress by doubling the transmission rate. Both analytical methods and computer simulations have been performed to evaluate the proposed batching scheme in terms of bandwidth and buffer requirement as well as the blocking probability in multicast VoD systems. Compared with a system without batching, the result shows that over 90% of bandwidth reduction can be obtained. It is shown that only 90 streams are required for one movie to support about 1440 concurrent customers in 2 hours with less than 5% blocking probability.