A variable bandwidth broadcasting protocol for video-on-demand

We present the first broadcasting protocol that can alter the number of channels allocated to a given video without inconveniencing the viewer and without causing any temporary bandwidth surge. Our variable bandwidth broadcasting (VBB) protocol assigns to each video a minimum number of channels whose bandwidths are all equal to the video consumption rate. Additional channels can be assigned to the video at any time to reduce the customer waiting time or retaken to free server bandwidth. The cost of this additional flexibility is quite reasonable as the bandwidth requirements of our VBB fall between those of the fast broadcasting protocol and the new pagoda broadcasting protocol