A Storage Saving Scheme to Share HD-Quality Content in Community Networks

Abstract

Community networks can provide the geographical advantage to cover and connect community members. In addition, it is more beneficial to share HD-quality content among those community members via the community networks. Recently, we have proposed a Personal video recorder (PVR) -based community network-based on the multiple-loop Fiber Channel Arbitration Loop (FC-AL) connection, which can provide the scalability without using expensive FC-AL switches. As a community network size grows, however, popular programs tend to be stored redundantly in many PVRs, thereby wasting the storage space that could otherwise be used to store additional TV programs. Thus, we propose how to extend program storage hours in a community network by presenting storage saving algorithms for both PVRs and network disks. Through extensive simulations, we finally show that our schemes significantly extend program storage hours by an average of 69.7%.