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Voyager Key Features
Voyager is a video streaming solution for delivery
of digital media (i.e. audio and/or video) to PC or TV clients. Voyager ’s
platform of choice is the Sun Microsystems
family of servers.
Voyager provides:
Scalable architecture - hardware and software
Scalable Architecture
At the heart of Voyager is the patented Voyager Interconnect Architecture (VIA). VIA lets VoD service providers optimize performance on a continually upgradeable platform. VIA supports varied multi-computing configurations and provides the flexibility needed to support a larger number of video streams. Additional nodes (servers) can be added incrementally to meet growing demands while retaining the service provider’s original investment.
Systems can be configured to support thousands of video streams with unlimited hours of video storage. Voyager server nodes can be located centrally, or distributed regionally, to meet local demands. To learn more about this unique capability please refer to the section -
Voyager Interconnect Architecture
Distributed Architecture
Voyager is ideally suited for distributing digital media through remote cache servers where demand for streaming is the highest. Master copies of digital content are maintained on the central Voyager server and “active - in use” copies are provided through cache servers located closest to the demand to optimize network efficiencies. The Voyager Collaborative Architecture (VCA) provides local users with full video server functionality and connectivity to the central or remote archives. In either instance content can be identified as public or private which determines what content is and what is not accessible by remote sites. In addition the service provider has the option of pre-positioning or scheduling content movement to remote sites.
Support for a wide range of media formats
Voyager supports a wide range of video formats including MPEG1, MPEG2, MP3, MPEG4 (ISMA), QuickTime, Real and Microsoft for both narrowband and broadband (Internet or Intranet) networks. For clients using normal dial-up connections or even mobile devices (PDA’s or cellphones), Voyager will support the delivery of MPEG4 video allowing audio and video to be served to users connected with less than 56 KBPS of bandwidth. For broadband environments, Voyager provides support for higher quality (higher bit rate) streaming videos, using either MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 content at rates up to 12 MBPS. This flexible support for higher quality video will allow a multitude of applications to be enhanced with high quality video services.
Support for industry standard protocols
In addition to supporting industry standard file formats for audio and video, Voyager supports the popular Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) protocols including IP and Hyper Text Transport Protocol (HTTP). This allows the product to be used with industry standard applications like HTML Web Browsers. It also allows the product to be used on any IP based networks (fixed, wireless or satellite).
Voyager also utilizes the latest "leading edge" Internet protocols including:
The use of these protocols will allow the solution to be as efficient as possible for delivering video in today’s network infrastructure. They require no changes to the existing infrastructure but will take advantage of new hardware as they are added to the network.
Browser User Interface
Voyager applications and services are easily accessed through a common web browser interface. Subscribers, administrators, system managers and application developers can use either Netscape or Internet Explorer to access all of Voyager ’s applications, functions, management tools and video objects. This enables efficient applications development and deployment.
IP Video-on-Demand (VoD)
Voyager is a total VoD solution that greatly simplifies the process of planning, launching and operating VoD. The Voyager VoD Solution packages Sun’s proven world-class server technology with all the components necessary for an IP service provider to deliver VoD to residential, commercial, institutional or internal customers.
Multimedia File System
At the heart of the Voyager server is a high performance multimedia file system. The file system incorporates techniques like large block-size transfers, data replication, and automatic disk calibration to provide reliable delivery of audio and video data.
Content Storage Options - Multimedia Archive
Voyager uses a variety of content-storage options to support digital video applications. Voyager incorporates a Hierarchical Storage Management System (HSM) to provide archive/near line storage capability on any type of storage devices. The result is low cost, industry-standard storage using the latest technology.
Content and System Management
The Voyager Management Applications (VMA) comes with a comprehensive web based administration, content and system management tool-set including content loading, searching, clip editing, accounting, statistics and user profile management. The combination of these applications with Voyager ’s media object database provides an integrated digital media management system for streaming media assets. VMA addresses many of the issues relating to storage/content management, user profiles and usage statistics and information profiles, and search and access. Please refer to the VMA section for a detail description of the applications available with Voyager .
Flexible Configurations
Voyager is available in many varied and flexible configurations to meet a range of customer requirements for content storage, network distribution and scalable-processing and streaming capacity. Additional processing and storage resources can be added incrementally to meet growing demands while retaining the service provider’s original investment. Please refer to the configuration section for a description of the different configurations available for Voyager .
Quality of Service (QoS)
Voyager allocates and monitors the bandwidth and storage resources along each path and for each device. As a result each active stream has guaranteed bandwidth. The benefit of this feature to the network manager is that it allows control over how much bandwidth is being used for video streaming. It’s a feature we commonly refer to as "throttling". The systems administrator sets the parameters for how much bandwidth the Voyager server has available for streaming. Therefore, reducing the risk of overburdening your network.
© 2002 - 2004 Callisto Media Systems