Implementation and Evaluation of Proxy Caching Mechanisms with Video Qualify Adjustment

The proxy mechanism widely used in WWW systems offers low-delay data delivery by means of "proxy server". By applying the proxy mechanisms to the video streaming system, we expect that high-quality and low-delay video distribution can be accomplished without introducing extra load on the system. In addition, it is effective to adapt the quality of cached video data appropriately in the proxy if user requests are diverse due to heterogeneity in terms of the available bandwidth, end-system performance, and user′s preferences on the perceived video quality. We have proposed proxy caching mechanisms to accomplish the high-quality and highly-interactive video streaming services. In our proposed system, a video stream is divided into blocks for efficient use of the cache buffer. The proxy server is assumed to be able to adjust the quality of a cached or retrieved video block to the request through video filters. In this paper, to verify the practicality of our mechanisms, we implemented them on a real system and conducted experiments. Through evaluations from several performance aspects, it was shown that our proposed mechanisms can provide users with a low-latency and high-quality video streaming service in a heterogeneous environment.