An optimal bandwidth allocation algorithm for file distribution networks

In this paper, we study the problem of bandwidth allocation in bulk file distribution networks. We use the minimum overall finishing time as our metric to evaluate the network performance. We first prove that the overall finishing time is minimum when the overall bandwidth is evenly allocated to all the users. With this insight, we further propose an efficient algorithm to form a special link-level homogeneous overlay network in which all the overlay connections have roughly the same bandwidth. In the context of overlay content distribution, this special overlay network is critical to achieve optimal bandwidth allocation in two perspectives: it fully utilizes the overall bandwidth, and it greatly facilitates the content delivery in the overlay network. Both numerical analysis and simulations are presented to validate our proposed algorithm