The Cyclone Server Architecture: streamlining delivery of popular content

Abstract-We propose a new webserver architecture optimized for delivery of large, popular files. Delivery of such files currently pose a scalability problem for conventional content providers, which must devote server-side resources in direct proportion to the high multiprogramming level induced by a set of these connections. While use of scalable multicast may remedy this problem some day, multicast is rarely supported in today's wide-area infrastructure. Our approach alleviates many of the most serious scalability problems by developing new server-side mechanisms capable of managing a large set of TCP connections transporting the same content. The strategy we employ relies on the use of fast forward error correcting (FEC) codes to generate encodings of popular content, of which only a small sliding window is cached in memory at any time instant. The concurrent TCP connections then access content only from this shared window, which is globally useful to all clients. Our method hi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: COMCOM
• Authors: Stanislav Rost, John W. Byers, Azer Bestavros
• Keywords: COMCOM 2002, Concurrent Tcp Connections, Scalability Problems, TCP Connections