VCL: a high performance virtual CD library server
Jiguang Wan, Changsheng M. Xie, Zhihu Tan · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2005
With the increasing of CD data in internet, CD mirror server has become the new technology. Considering the performance requirement of the traditional CD mirror server, we present a novel high performance VCL (Virtual CD Library) server. What makes VCL server superior is the two patented technologies: a new caching architecture and an efficient network protocol specifically tailored to VCL applications. VCL server is built based on an innovative caching technology. It employs a two-level cache structure on both a client side and the server side. Instead of using existing network and file protocols such as SMB/CIFS etc that are generally used by existing CD server, we have developed a set of new protocols specifically suitable to VCL environment. The new protocol is a native VCL protocol built directly on TCP/IP protocol. VCL protocol optimizes data transfer performance for block level data as opposed to file system level data. The advantage of using block level native protocol is reduced network-bandwidth requirement to transfer same amount of data as compared to file system level protocol. Our experiment and independent testing have shown that VCL servers allow much more number of concurrent users than existing products. For very high resolution DVD videos, VCL with 100Mbps NIC supports over 10 concurrent users viewing the same or different videos simultaneously. For VCD videos, the same VCL can support over 65 concurrent users viewing videos simultaneously. For data CDs, the VCL can support over 500 concurrent data stream users.