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Details of Grant
 
EPSRC Reference: GR/J11065/01
Title: SCALABLE MULTIMEDIA STORAGE SERVERS
Principal Investigator: Professor D Shepherd
Other Investigators:   Professor D Hutchison
Dr A Scott

Recognised Researchers:
Project Partner: Pre Nexus Migration

Department: Computing
Organisation: Lancaster University
Abstract: To investigate the scalability of multimedia storage servers from tens to hundreds of users. Progress: This project is also being supported by Olivetti Research Limited, Cambridge. The project has now developed into two separate but complementary strands. One is the investigation how distributed multimedia fileservers can cooperate over a local and wide area to produce a truly distributed multimedia server, and involves the automatic transfer of multimedia data to its optimum position in the storage hierarchy. The other is concerned with the nodes of the distributed multimedia fileserver where special hardware and knowledge of the composition of the data on the storage server can be used to produce a truly scalable system. One of the requirements of a scalable system is its ability to adjust dynamically to overload conditions by the addition of extra resources. Research in this project shows that the use of conventional techniques such as file replication and network striping do not solve the scalability problem. Initial investigations show that a hybrid combination of network striping and file replication exploiting multi-resolution compression techniques is a promising approach to a scalable storage architecture. Various multi-resolution schemes and how they could be used to allow the scalability of the multimedia server node are currently being investigated with the support of the Olivetti Research Limited and their specially developed hardware.
Starts: 01 April 1993 Ends: 30 September 1996 Value (£): 135,584
Scheme: Standard Research
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
  ICT Networks and Distributed Systems
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
  Communications
Electronics
Software