How does SmartBooster work?
As shown in the figure above, there are three component groups in the SmartBooster system.
The first group consists of single or multiple media servers (including web servers). These media servers can be an existing video website or the servers provided by BoostSoft. A media server can be a Windows Media Server, HTTP Server, or the server provided by us. They are the providers of the content. With SmartBooster, the media servers are able to support:
The second group has a number of peers (clients) via largely ad hoc connections. A peer can be a desktop PC, a workstation, or a laptop PC. It is the reviewer of the content provided by the media servers. Peers download content from the media servers with multithreading techniques and share (upload) content with other peers. All peers provide resources, including bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. Thus, as peers arrive and demand on SmartBooster increases, the total capacity of the SmartBooster system also increases.
The third group is composed of some management servers. There are currently four kinds of management servers in SmartBooster:
- Index (track) servers, which manage all parts of the shared content and connections of peers related to the content.
- Control servers, which control all aspects of the whole system.
- Directory servers, which provide directory services to peers.
- Statistic servers, which gather the statistics data of servers and peers.
There are three types of protocols controlling three kinds of traffic in SmartBooster:
- The media server protocols control the multithreading traffic, which transmits the content from media servers to peers.
- The P2P protocols control the P2P traffic between peers. Data block division, storage cache and replacement, data pre-fetching, and some other strategies are implemented for optimal overall performance.
- The management protocols control the management traffic between management servers and peers.
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