DISTRIBUTED METHOD FOR EQUITABLE BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION FOR CONTENT DISTRIBUTION IN A NETWORK

摘要

A distributed method is presented for determining equitable bandwidth allocations in a content distribution tree network, where the root of the tree has a server that broadcasts multiple programs throughout the tree. The intensive computations in the distributed method are done at each of the nodes independently while only minimal information is exchanged among the nodes. Each network link has limited capacity. The allocation problem is formulated as an equitable resource allocation problem with a lexicographic maximin objective function that provides equitable service performance for all requested programs at the various nodes. The constraints include link capacity constraints and tree-like ordering constraints imposed on each of the programs. The distributed method converges to the equitable solution in a finite number of iterations. The distributed method can be applied to a network comprised of multiple trees.