It is difficult to manage the communications traffic on a high-speed video transport network. For live video, the exact dynamics of the VBR traffic are unknown. But because much of the video carried on these networks will be from prerecorded sources (such as full-length movies, music video clips, and educational material), and because many of the traffic characteristics for this material can be fully known before the material is transmitted, we can do a better job of traffic management.

There is an emerging type of prerecorded traffic that will likely dominate the broadband residential networks of the future -- Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic. With VoD, a viewer can choose a video program from a large selection and specify the starting time of the program. The VoD technology sends the video over a telecommunication network to the viewer's home. In this talk we will introduce and compare a variety of traffic management schemes for transporting prerecorded video from a provider's server to a viewer.

Dr. Keith W. Ross is an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at University of Pennsylvania. He also holds secondary appointments in the Computer Information Science and in the Operations and Informations Management (Wharton) departments. Keith received his BS from Tufts University (1979), his MS from Columbia University (1981), and his PhD from the University of Michigan (1985). He studies protocols and traffic management in high-speed telecommunication networks, including local area networks, wide area data networks, voice networks, and broadband integrated services digital networks. He is currently performing research in ATM and video on demand.

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