Abstract
Video on Demand VOD is a multimedia service which allows a remote user to select and then view video at his convenience at any time he wants. A VoD system is usually intended to provide VCR like functions and capabilities. Required bandwidth and latency time defined as a user waiting time are the most critical issues in VoD systems. While the majority of previous works have focused on minimizing the required bandwidth and the latency time, a little attention is given to interactivity handling. Interactive solutions propose either a very limited interactivity or require a server intervention to handle VCR operations which leads to an additional use of bandwidth. In this paper, we describe a new broadcast protocol named Discrete Interactive Staggered Broadcasting, DISB. This protocol treats interactivity through local-client resources regardless the number of downloading channels used. The evaluation of DISB protocol is conducted through an analytical study. This study shows the DISB-client-buffer behavior, the client-waiting time when performing a Jump Forward operation, the limit of a Fast Forward one and how DISB performs comparing to other Staggered Broadcasting protocols. This electronic document is a "live" template. The various components of your paper [title, text, heads, etc.] are already defined on the style sheet, as illustrated by the portions given in this document.