Bandwidth usage distribution of multimedia servers using Patching

Several multicast bandwidth sharing techniques have been proposed in the literature to provide more scalability to multimedia servers. These techniques are often analyzed in terms of the average bandwidth requirements they demand to satisfy client requests. However, average values do not always provide an accurate estimate of the required bandwidth. Therefore, they cannot be the only parameter used to guarantee a certain level of quality to the clients. In this work we propose a simple analytical model to accurately calculate the distribution of the number of concurrent streams or, equivalently, the bandwidth usage distribution considering the popular Patching technique. We show that the distribution may be modeled as a binomial random variable in the single object case, and as a sum of independent binomial random variables in the multiple object case. Through simulation we validate our results. Moreover, we also illustrate how these results may be practically used for instance (i) to allocate bandwidth to provide a given level of QoS, (ii) to estimate the impact on QoS when some system parameters dynamically change, and (iii) to configure the overall system.