A dynamic buffer management technique for minimizing the necessary buffer space in a continuous media server

Abstract

A dynamic buffer management technique is developed, called WBM (window-based buffer management), which considers VBR (variable bit-rate) compression in a continuous media server. WBM divides the service duration of clients into several small time intervals called windows, and reallocates the buffer space every window period. WBM could incur a relatively high run-time overhead because it reallocates the buffer space periodically. To reduce the run-time overhead, WBM maintains the admitted clients by groups and manages the groups in a round-robin fashion. We present a case study which shows a significant improvement in the buffer utilization and in the necessary amount of buffer space.