KR20020021415A - Method for Internet Broadcast-Purpose Audio/Video Streaming Accelerator and Its System - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A construction method and system for audio and video streaming acceleration device is provided that a streaming device, which communicates a server through PCI/ISA, is at outside of a server and accesses data. CONSTITUTION: A server(25) can have many PCI/ISA cards. The server is connected to WAN or Internet with 100Mbps Ethernet. NAS is configured as Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet and NAS network-attached storages contain file system. NAS-based file system must be ported on the server in order that streaming accelerator(24) accesses storage, which is attached to NAS network because SAN-attached storage does not have file system. So, Fibre Channel Protocol is also ported to access SAN network-attached storage(29). SCSI can also be used instead of NAS/SAN. The streaming server accesses the streaming accelerator parallel as Round-Robin or Least Load First service.

Description

Method for Configuring Audio / Video Streaming Accelerator and Its System {Method for Internet Broadcast-Purpose Audio / Video Streaming Accelerator and Its System}

A method of constructing a general internet broadcasting system is illustrated in FIG. 3. In this case, since a huge amount of data must be accessed from the storage device 29 for the streaming service, a bottleneck between the streaming server 25 and the storage device 29 occurs. In addition, since the streaming server 25 has to handle streaming requests of a plurality of customers 21, the load on the computing device becomes high and a bottleneck occurs. In order to solve this bottleneck, it is common to configure a system using a high-performance server 25 and a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) storage 29.

The streaming server itself includes software for streaming services (eg Windows Media Technology, Real System G2). Such software can directly stream commonly used audio and video files (AVI, MOV, MPEG, WAV, MIDI, VRML, etc.). In other words, real-time transmission can be performed without converting a file such as WAV or AVI into a dedicated format file. However, the high performance streaming server 25 is expensive because it must maintain the cost of the server itself and a server-class operating system for the streaming service, it is not easy to expand the storage, and when one server fails, This will have a huge impact on performance.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for efficiently streaming multimedia data, in particular audio / video data, over the Internet. The server in charge of streaming needs to send data to many subscribers, which requires a lot of load and computation. It is necessary to distribute the load by using a dedicated device that is responsible for streaming. To achieve this, we can think of a system that puts a streaming-only device outside the server, communicates with the server, and simultaneously accesses data from the storage. The interface between the server and the streaming-only device must meet the following conditions: The server should be able to issue streaming commands to the streaming-only device and observe its status without changing existing programs or with simple changes. In addition, the function of the streaming-only device should not adversely affect the performance of the server. In addition, it should be easy and easy to install the streaming dedicated device on the server.

Such a system can be configured via a server and a serial, parallel, LAN, or PCI / ISA communication interface. The present invention utilizes a scalable, easy-to-install LAN, PCI / ISA interface. LAN is not suitable because it is used as a resource for reading and transmitting data from storage, and the PCI / ISA interface is a good method. Therefore, the present invention is to develop a streaming dedicated device capable of PCI / ISA interface with the existing server, and consists of an interface circuit for accessing data from the shared storage and software configuration for the streaming function.

1 is a block diagram of the present invention

2 is a block diagram of an Internet broadcasting system of the present invention

3 is a block diagram of a conventional Internet broadcasting system

4 is a diagram illustrating a network file system configuration of the present invention.

5 is a configuration diagram of a fiber channel network of the present invention

6 is a block diagram illustrating a parallel processing of the streaming accelerator of the present invention.

7 is a flowchart of load balancing and customer billing management of the parallel streaming accelerator of the present invention.

<Explanation of Signs of Major Parts of Drawings>

11: Ethernet physical connection 12: Ethernet controller

13: SCSI controller 14: NAS / SAN physical connections

15: NAS / SAN Controller 16: Serial Physical Connections

17: central processing unit 18: central processing unit storage

19: Network buffer storage 20: PCI bus controller

21: Internet broadcast subscriber 22: Internet

23 switch or hub 24 streaming accelerator

25: streaming server 26: internet broadcast management server

27: LAN Line 28: NAS / SAN Storage Network

29: storage devices

The basic configuration of the new type of Internet broadcasting system with the streaming accelerator 24 is shown in FIG. The new type of Internet broadcasting system attaches the streaming accelerator 24 to the PCI or ISA bus of the general purpose server 25. Streaming accelerators can be used with multiple accelerators in one server, up to the number of PCI / ISA slots supported. The streaming accelerator 24 is directly connected to the WAN or the Internet through the 100MBps Ethernet 12. Another communication port 15 is connected to the NAS, SAN network. The important point here is that the NAS is composed of a network in the form of Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, each of the storage connected to the NAS storage network 29 has a built-in file system. The SAN storage network 29 forms a Fablic of a Fiber Channel method (FIG. 5), except that storage connected to a SAN does not have a built-in File System (FIG. 4). Therefore, in order for the streaming accelerator 24 to access storage attached to the NAS network, the NAS-based file system (FIG. 4) must be ported to the accelerator itself, and in order to access storage attached to the SAN network, the Fiber Channel Protocol (FIG. 5). ) Is ported.

The way the streaming accelerator accesses storage is to connect to the RAID system via a separate SCSI interface (13) in addition to NAS / SAN. Therefore, in an Internet broadcasting system in which NAS / SAN is not established, it can be accessed using a shared RAID. The provision of such a SCSI interface method makes it possible to be used interchangeably in the existing Internet broadcasting system. 6 is a configuration diagram for one streaming server to broadcast the Internet using a plurality of streaming accelerators. Many streaming accelerators attach to the PCI slots supported by the streaming server's motherboard and perform streaming functions in parallel.

7 is a series of program processing flow diagrams where a streaming server selects an appropriate candidate from multiple available streaming accelerators to send a streaming command and manages the customer's billing when multiple streaming requests are received. The streaming server receives the state from the attached streaming accelerators and selects a suitable candidate. The information transferred from the streaming server to the selected streaming accelerator is the requested streaming data name, the customer's IP address, and the customer's IP Prot. Selecting a suitable candidate suggests and uses a load balancing scheme to reduce the load on the streaming accelerator. Load balancing method is Round-Robin method and Least Load First Service method. The round-robin method has the advantage that the operation for assigning is simple by assigning the available accelerators in order whenever a customer's request comes in. The Least Load First Service method uses the load state information transmitted from the streaming accelerator to allocate the requesting customer to the accelerator with the least load, and has the advantage of optimizing load balancing.

High efficiency can be obtained through the present invention. By shortening the path from the storage device where the data is stored to the client, the traffic load can be reduced, and the data transmission time can be shortened. In addition, a low cost effect is obtained. Dedicated streaming hardware devices and embedded software enable the development of high performance and low cost streaming accelerators. In terms of inter-operability, it can be used together with the devices used in existing Internet broadcasting. High Reliability effect can overcome the fault or failure of a specific server. Scalability effect prevents the expansion of storage and streaming server. To facilitate expansion.

Claims (2)

Server-attached streaming acceleration device and load balancing method for distributing load of streaming server for internet audio / video broadcasting, and method for configuring internet broadcast. The method of claim 1, wherein the streaming server accesses a plurality of streaming accelerators in parallel, and the storage accelerator connected to the network can simultaneously access the server and the modularity of the streaming accelerator.