Video-on-demand: experience with protocols and their implementation

This paper summarizes some observations that we had during our research project aiming at investigating the practical problems encountered during the implementation of interactive multimedia information systems. The prototype deals with digitally compressed information encoded in MPEG-2 formats. We have opted for the use of a set of standard protocols. In this paper we give a brief description and critique of these standard protocols and discuss some aspects related to their implementation. We have specifically focused here on the MPEG-2 Digital Storage Media Command and Control (DSM-CC) protocol.