Congestion-free Routing of Streaming Multimedia Content in BMIN-based Parallel Systems

Multimedia servers are increasingly employing parallel systems for the retrieval, scheduling and delivery of streaming multimedia content. However, given non-zero blocking probabilities in interconnection networks of most real parallel systems, jitter-free constant-rate delivery of streaming data cannot often be guaranteed. Such a guarantee can be best accomplished through the elimination of all congestion in the network. In this paper, we focus on folded Benes BMIN networks and achieve a fast convergence to congestion-free transmissions using an approach that combines flow-based adaptive routing with a distributed version of Opferman’s looping algorithm. This combined approach significantly reduces the buffering requirements at the receiving stations. In addition, it also achieves a low start-up delay, important for interactive web-based multimedia applications.