A Comparison of Multicast Pull Models

We consider the setting of a web server that receives requests for documents from clients, and returns the requested documents over a multicast/broadcast channel. We compare the quality of service (QoS) obtainable by optimal schedules under various models of the capabilities of the server and the clients to send and receive segments of a document out of order. We show that allowing the server to send segments out of order does not improve any reasonable QoS measure. However, the ability of the clients to receive data out of order can drastically improve the achievable QoS under some, but not all, reasonable/common QoS measures.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: ALGORITHMICA
• Authors: Kirk Pruhs, Patchrawat Uthaisombut
• Keywords: ALGORITHMICA 2005, Document, Optimal Schedules, Web Server