KR100611099B1 - Apparatus for Managing Streamer Process for Media Streaming and Method Thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

1. TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a streamer process management apparatus and method for streaming media in a next-generation Internet server.

2. The technical problem to be solved by the invention

The present invention provides a streamer process management apparatus and method for streaming media in a next-generation Internet server for optimally utilizing computer resources such as processes, threads, and memory according to an increase in services by reflecting a device characteristic of a network resource. The purpose is to provide.

3. Summary of Solution to Invention

In the streamer process management apparatus for media streaming, the present invention provides a streamer for generating and managing a media stream transmission means (streamer process), and constructing and transmitting a message for controlling the operation of the media stream transmission means. Control means; Data storage means for storing management data generated by the streamer control means; And the media stream transmitting means for identifying the resource state of the system and reading the media data from an external storage device and transmitting the media stream according to the bit rate of the data.

4. Important uses of the invention

The present invention is used in a video data transmission system and the like.

Next Generation Internet Servers, Streamer Processes, Streamer Control, Bit Rate, Media Streaming

Description

Apparatus for Managing Streamer Process for Media Streaming and Method Thereof}             

1 is a configuration diagram of a next generation Internet server system to which the present invention is applied and one embodiment of a client environment.

2 is a configuration diagram of an embodiment of a streamer process management apparatus for media streaming in a next generation Internet server according to the present invention.

3 is a detailed block diagram of one embodiment of the streamer control process of FIG.

4 is a detailed block diagram of one embodiment of the streamer process of FIG.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a process of initializing a streamer processor management apparatus for a streamer process management method for media streaming according to the present invention.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a streamer process management method for media streaming in a next-generation Internet server according to the present invention.

* Explanation of symbols for the main parts of the drawings

201: Streamer Control Process

210: streamer control process data storage

220 to 223: streamer process

310: streaming control protocol management unit

320: streamer process management unit

340: Control Command Analyzer 341: Control Message Configurator

342: control message transmitter 410: control message analysis unit

420: media data control unit 430: service management unit

431 Thread 440: Media Data Transmitter

441: Media Data Manager

The present invention relates to a streamer process management apparatus and method for media streaming in a next-generation Internet server, and more particularly, to efficiently manage media data to a client in an environment equipped with a network storage such as a next-generation Internet server system. Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming, and a method thereof for streaming.

In the following example, a next generation Internet server will be described as an example.

In general, when a computer system is connected to a network to service video streaming to stream media data to a client user, network bottlenecks in the server system occur when the service limit is reached due to the high bit rate corresponding to the characteristics of the video file. Get up.

Thus, there is a method of clustering multiple computer systems to solve this problem. However, such a method is very expensive and difficult to manage because it uses a large number of computer systems.

In addition, in order to solve management problems and network bottlenecks in a plurality of computer servers, there is a method of mounting a device dedicated to streaming in the existing computer server. In this case, the load on the processor (CPU) is less than without using dedicated devices.

However, even in such a case, there is a problem that the limit of computer resources, that is, the limit of the number of processes or threads that can be supported, is reached as the services required by the clients are diversified and the number of services required are increased.

Conventional techniques for solving the above problems are described in paper 1 [apagiannis, A. Lioupis, D. Egglezos, S., Design and implementation of a low-cost clustered video server using a network of personal computers, Multimedia Software Engineering, Proceedings. Fourth International Symposium on, Page: 363-368, 11-13 Dec. 2002], Paper 2 [Takahashi, J .; Tode, H .; Murakami, K. QoS enhancement methods for MPEG video transmission on the Internet, Computers and Communications, Proceedings. ISCC2002, Seventh International Symposium on, pp. 106-113, 2002], Republic of Korea Patent Publication No. 2000-0041813 (Multimedia streaming method over a network) and Republic of Korea Patent Publication No. 2002-0081519 (Video streaming method in a video on demand system) ) Is disclosed.

The technique disclosed in Paper 1 proposes a method for clustering personal computers to support a video server in terms of cost and performance. In other words, in the provision of Video on Demand (VoD) service, low cost and high performance are realized by clustering personal computers and performing server applications on each system.

The technique disclosed in the paper 1 can realize low cost and high performance, but there is a problem in that it is difficult to manage from the viewpoint of maintaining multiple systems.

The technique disclosed in the above paper 2 is a technique for controlling frames by configuring multimedia data at the server side to ensure high quality at the client end in an Internet environment. This method applies packet ordering considering the structure of MPEG coding and packet order rearrangement for the end-to-end control structure. The technique disclosed in the above paper 2 takes into consideration the process of packetization of data in preparation for traffic congestion and packet loss in multimedia transmission, so that even if there is a packet loss, it does not significantly affect the image quality. It is advantageous in many environments.

Patent No. 2000-0041813 discloses a streaming method of reading and streaming video data in frame units to transmit multimedia streams in order to effectively process multimedia streaming. In other words, the present invention discloses a technique in which multimedia data is divided into frames, transmitted into packets, and then received at the receiving end to extract unit frames from the packets, synchronized, and continuously reproduced through buffer management. Patent No. 2000-0041813 can process multimedia data itself to improve multimedia transmission speed.

On the other hand, Patent No. 2002-0081519 packetizes and streams a video file in picture units according to the network bandwidth in order to service a stable video that is seamless regardless of network bandwidth fluctuating over time.

In order to solve streaming problems caused by various services or increase in the number of users, the conventional technology processes multimedia data itself in order to secure a plurality of servers or to replace the current server capacity and network bandwidth characteristics. Doing.

That is, in the related art, without considering the resources of the server sufficiently, even if the network resources are sufficient, the solution is solved by replacing the entire server when the processor resources are insufficient or adding a new server when the network resources are insufficient. In addition, a method of converting the multimedia data itself to be streamed into a data structure for optimal stream is proposed as a method for solving the insufficient capacity of the server.

However, the prior art as described above indirectly tries to solve a problem such as a bottleneck of a network due to a high bit rate, and thus there is a problem in that the computer resources of the stream server are not optimally used.

The present invention has been proposed to solve the above problems, and reflects the device characteristics of the network resources to optimize the use of computer resources such as processes, threads, and memory according to the increase of services. An object of the present invention is to provide a trimmer process management apparatus and a method thereof.

An apparatus of the present invention for achieving the above object is a streamer process management apparatus for media streaming, the message for generating and managing a media stream transmission means (streamer process), and controls the operation of the media stream transmission means; Streamer control means for constructing and transmitting; Data storage means for storing management data generated by the streamer control means; And the media stream transmitting means for identifying the resource state of the system and reading the media data from an external storage device and transmitting the media stream according to the bit rate of the data.

On the other hand, the method of the present invention, a streamer process management method applied to the streamer process management apparatus for media streaming, the stream service request receiving step of receiving a request for a stream service from a client; A command analysis step of analyzing a command with respect to the request of the client and determining a session connection state; A command messaging step wherein the streamer control process messages the command and sends it to the streamer process; And a media data transmission step of interpreting the message received by the streamer process, managing media data according to a corresponding command, and transmitting the media data to the client according to a bit rate.

The above objects, features and advantages will become more apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. First of all, in adding reference numerals to the components of each drawing, it should be noted that the same components have the same number as much as possible even if displayed on different drawings. In addition, in describing the present invention, when it is determined that the detailed description of the related known technology may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted. That is, known technologies related to the present invention include Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and programming technology using Unix or Linux, and specific details thereof are well known to those skilled in the art. Detailed description of the known technology will be omitted. Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a configuration diagram of an embodiment of a next generation Internet server system to which the present invention is applied.

As shown in the figure, the next generation Internet server system to which the present invention is applied includes a processor 101 for performing streamer process management of the present invention, a main memory 104 loaded for the streamer process, and a swap. The trimmer process includes network-storage devices 120-123 that are hardware that read the stream data and process the transmission. And disks 124 to 127 storing stream data and gigabit networks 128 to 131 in charge of physical transmission.

In the flow of stream data, when the clients 110 to 110 + N request stream data, the streamer process 101 of the present invention loads the data read from the disks 124 to 127 into the memories 132 to 135. Afterwards, the data is transmitted to the client through the gigabit networks 128 to 131 and the gigabit Ethernet switch 140 according to the transmission speed.

In general, when a client requests a lot of services or requests stream data of a high bit rate, a bottleneck occurs in the processor 101 or a bottleneck occurs in the networks 128 to 131.

In the former case, a dedicated device can be installed in a server, thereby greatly reducing the processing burden on the processor. Here, the processing burden of the processor can be reduced, so that more service requests can be processed. However, in this case, you may run out of process or thread resources to process the stream. Therefore, there is a need for a streamer process management apparatus for identifying and managing such resources.

2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a streamer process management apparatus for media streaming in a next generation Internet server according to the present invention.

As shown in the figure, the streamer process management apparatus 200 for media streaming in the next-generation Internet server according to the present invention, streamer control process 201, streamer processes (220 to 223) and streamer control process The data storage unit 210 is included. In the description of the present invention, for the sake of convenience, four streamer processes 220 to 223 will be described as an example, but the difference in the number will not be significant.

The streamer control process 201 generates and maps streamer processes 220 to 223 respectively responsible for network-storage devices 120 to 123 for media streaming, and then exchanges necessary information through mutual messages ( 250 to 253). Here, the process of creating and mapping a process can be easily implemented as a program using Unix or Linux, and since this is well known to those skilled in the art, a description of the specific process will be omitted.

When the client 110 requests a service, the streamer control process 201 stores session information and the like in the streamer control process data storage 210 as management data for the service request. If the command is necessary for stream transmission, the streamer control process 201 conveys it as a message to the streamer processes 220-223. The streamer processes 220-223 cause threads to send streams to clients using network-storage devices 120-123.

If this is explained by function, it is as follows.

The streamer control process 201 is responsible for generating and managing streamer processes 220 to 223 in charge of stream processing, and also configures a message to control the operation of the streamer processes 220 to 223. And is responsible for the function of transmitting. This will be described in detail with reference to FIG. 3 as follows.

3 is a detailed block diagram of an embodiment of the streamer control process of FIG. 2.

As shown in the figure, the streamer control process according to the present invention includes a streaming control protocol manager 310 and a streamer process manager 320.

In addition, the streaming control protocol manager 310 controls the command to control the streamer process, the control command analyzer 340 for interpreting a command related to a stream operation or a session related command transmitted from the client 110. A message composer 341 and a control message transmitter 342 for delivering (350) the messages configured in the control message composer 341 to the streamer processes 220 to 223. Here, the technology related to the messaging and the message interpretation to be described later may use the standard specification of the "Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP)" of the IETF. RTSP is an application layer protocol that performs real-time media transmission in an on demand format, and is widely used in the streaming technology field of the present invention as a standard for a method of controlling streaming data on the Internet. It is a known technique. Therefore, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the RTSP protocol can be easily understood and implemented based on the contents described in this specification. And more detailed description of the interpretation will be omitted.

Meanwhile, the streamer process manager 320 generates streamer processes 220 to 223 that actually read and transmit streams using the network-storage devices 120 to 123, and the streamer processes 120 to 123. 123 to map and manage 360.

4 is a detailed block diagram of an embodiment of the streamer process of FIG. 2.

As shown in the figure, the streamer process of the present invention includes a control message analyzer 410, a media data controller 420, and a service manager 430.

The control message analyzer 410 is responsible for interpreting the message transmitted by the control message transmitter 342 described with reference to FIG. 3. This message is converted into a command through the media data control unit 420 to control the processing of the media data.

The service manager 430 is responsible for identifying a resource of the stream server and generating and operating a thread 431 for directly processing media data in response to a service request of the client 110.

The thread 431 includes a media data transmitter 440 and a media data manager 441. The media data manager 441 loads the stream data of the disk connected to the network-storage devices 120 to 123 to the memories 132 to 135 according to the command interpreted by the control message interpreter 410. The loaded stream data is transmitted by the media data transmitter 440 according to the previously known bit rate of the stream data.

That is, the media data manager 441 grasps the memory resource state of the system and efficiently loads the stream data stored in the disk into the memory in proportion to the bit rate corresponding to the media data characteristic requested by the client. The media data transmitter 440 secures the current network bandwidth resources in proportion to the bit rate and transmits the media data loaded by the media data manager 441 to the client.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a process of initializing a streamer processor management apparatus for a streamer process management method for media streaming according to the present invention, and mapping with the network-storage devices 120 to 123 of FIG. There is a relationship.

First, before the service request from the client, the streamer processor management apparatus 200 is initialized (501), and the streamer control process 201 is the streamer process 220 corresponding to the network-storage devices (120 to 123) To 223 and generate (502) and map (503) the corresponding network-storage devices (120 to 123) to perform initialization.

The streamer process manager 320 manages the mapped process until the end.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a streamer process management method for media streaming in a next-generation Internet server according to the present invention, and illustrates a flow from when a client accesses a stream server to service termination.

First, the client 110 connects to the streamer process management apparatus 200 through the Internet 150 to request a stream service (601), thereby processing the service requested by the streamer process management apparatus 200. .

The streamer control process 201 analyzes the command for the received client request and determines the session connection state (602). The session information is stored as management data (603).

Instructions from client 110 are mostly stream start, manipulation, and termination on the player, and these instructions must be passed 250-253 to the streaming processes 220-223 that actually stream.

Accordingly, the streamer control process 201 messages 604 the command and sends it to the streamer processes 220-223 using the inter-process communication function provided by the system (605).

Thereafter, the streamer processes 220 to 223 interpret the message received from the streamer control process 220 again (606) to control streaming according to the command.

After the message is interpreted, if there is a connection session with the client (607), the media data is managed according to the command and the transmission of the data is controlled (611). On the other hand, if there is no connection session with the client (607), it is necessary to create a thread to handle the stream (610).

In this case, the generation of the thread may be controlled according to the availability of server resources and network resources (608 and 609). Thread creation can be created on demand, and a thread pool can be introduced and managed.

The thread 431 in charge of the actual streaming stores the media data stored in the disks 124 to 127 in the stream dedicated memories 132 to 135. The stored data is transmitted 611 through the mounted network ports 128 to 131 according to the media characteristics and according to the bit rate required for transmission.

Thereafter, when the streaming thread transmits all the media data (612), the streamer process 220 returns (613) all resources allocated to the media service and terminates the service of the client (614).

The method of the present invention as described above may be implemented as a program and stored in a computer-readable recording medium (CD-ROM, RAM, ROM, floppy disk, hard disk, magneto-optical disk, etc.).

The present invention described above is not limited to the above-described embodiments and the accompanying drawings, and various substitutions, modifications, and changes are possible in the art without departing from the technical spirit of the present invention. It will be clear to those of ordinary knowledge.

 As described above, the present invention reflects a device characteristic of a network resource, and thus, to some extent, the burden of replacing or expanding a server due to lack of processor capacity or processor resource or lack of network resource in a next-generation Internet server, etc. There is an effect that can be reduced.

In addition, the present invention reflects and controls characteristics such as bit rate and network bandwidth of media data even if the number of services requested by a client increases in the future, thereby effectively serving a media stream within an allowed resource of a server. .

Furthermore, the present invention has the effect of further improving the performance of the stream server when used in parallel with the existing method, that is, the operation of the multimedia data itself and the clustering method for supporting multiple stream servers.

Claims (8)

In the streamer process management apparatus for media streaming, Streamer control means for generating and managing a media stream transmission means (streamer process), and constructing and transmitting a message for controlling the operation of the media stream transmission means; Data storage means for storing management data generated by the streamer control means; And The media stream transmission means for identifying a resource state of the system and reading media data from an external storage device and transmitting the media stream according to the bit rate of the data Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming comprising a. The method of claim 1, The streamer control means, First management means for messaging the command required by the media stream transmission means (streamer process) and transmitting the message; And Second management means for generating the media stream transmission means and mapping and managing the media stream storage device; Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming comprising a. The method of claim 2, The first management means, Control command analyzing means for interpreting a command relating to a stream operation received from a client and a session related command; Control message constructing means for messageing a command to control the media stream transmitting means; And Control message transmission means for delivering the message configured by the control message configuration means to the media stream transmission means Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming comprising a. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, The media stream transmission means, Control message interpretation means for interpreting the message transmitted by the streamer control means; Service management means for identifying a system resource and a resource required for a service and managing a thread; The thread for directly processing media data; And Media data control means for controlling media data processing of the thread Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming comprising a. The method of claim 4, wherein The thread is Media data management means for loading media data into a memory in accordance with a command interpreted through said control message interpreting means; And Media data transmission means for transmitting the media data to the network according to the bit rate of the stream data Streamer process management apparatus for media streaming comprising a. The method of claim 5, The media data management means, A streamer process management apparatus for identifying a memory resource state of a system and loading stream data stored in a disk into the memory in proportion to a bit rate corresponding to a media data characteristic requested by a client. The method of claim 6, The media data transmission means, And secure current network bandwidth resources in proportion to the bit rate of the media data loaded by the media data management means, and transmit the media data to the client. In the streamer process management method applied to the streamer process management device for media streaming, A stream service request receiving step of receiving a request for a stream service from a client; A command analysis step of analyzing a command with respect to the request of the client and determining a session connection state; A command messaging step wherein the streamer control process messages the command and sends it to the streamer process; And The media data transmission step of interpreting the message received by the streamer process to manage the media data according to the command and to transmit the media data to the client according to the bit rate Streamer process management method for media streaming comprising a.

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