Multimedia Servers: Applications, Environments, and Design

Rating:
Summary: Altogether, a very good buy
Review: "Multimedia servers" is actually an introduction to the subject of implementing rich contents applications over data-networks, focusing on the design of high-bandwidth servers. The treatment of the many disciplines (e.g. communications, server architectures, storage issues, stream scheduling) is not well balanced. A lot of the volume is devoted to storage, while hardware/system architecture is briefly discussed. However, since this book seems to be a pioneering work in this emerging field, I find it most useful for any newcomer to the subject. The book includes a wealth of references as well as many field and simulation statistics results, being crucial to any developer in the field. Altogether, a very good buy.

Rating:
Summary: Altogether, a very good buy
Review: "Multimedia servers" is actually an introduction to the subject of implementing rich contents applications over data-networks, focusing on the design of high-bandwidth servers. The treatment of the many disciplines (e.g. communications, server architectures, storage issues, stream scheduling) is not well balanced. A lot of the volume is devoted to storage, while hardware/system architecture is briefly discussed. However, since this book seems to be a pioneering work in this emerging field, I find it most useful for any newcomer to the subject. The book includes a wealth of references as well as many field and simulation statistics results, being crucial to any developer in the field. Altogether, a very good buy.

Rating:
Summary: Good introductory text
Review: This book is a good introduction to the theoretical aspects of multimedia server technology. The book helps in providing an idea about the various requirements for mutimedia servers and the schemes/algorithms used to satisfy these requirements. However this book is not for someone who wants to set up a video server using commercial software and is looking for tips on how to configure it. This book is suitable for someone who is interested in conducting research on multimedia servers or wants some background knowledge on the topic.

Rating:
Summary: Multimedia Servers: Applications, Environments, and Design
Review: This book will undoubtedly satisfy the needs of application developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers because it provides end-to-end, top-down coverage: from application-specific issues to low-level components. Inside, the authors offer specific design, development, and implementation approaches that take into account the complexity of the environments in which multimedia servers operate. You'll learn which techniques are best suited for different kinds of applications and different kinds of networks. You'll master the challenges associated with resource scheduling, collaborative computing, session setup, and distributed storage. Most importantly, you'll discover how to put all of these solutions to work as part of a coherent strategy aimed at exploiting economies of scale and meeting quality-of-service requirements