Title:  The Cyclone Server Architecture:  Streamlining Delivery of Popular Content

Authors: Stan Rost, John Byers, Azer Bestavros (Boston University)

Date:   12/15/2000

Abstract:

We propose a new technique for efficiently delivering popular content
from information repositories with bounded file caches.   Our strategy
relies on the use of fast erasure codes (a.k.a. forward error
correcting codes) to generate encodings of popular files, of which 
only a small sliding window is cached at any time instant, even to satisfy 
an unbounded number of asynchronous requests for the file.  Our approach
capitalizes on concurrency to maximize sharing of state across different
request threads while minimizing cache memory utilization. Additional
reduction in resource requirements arises from providing for a 
lightweight version of the network stack.

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of our
Cyclone server as a Linux kernel subsystem.