Callisto - Solutions - Collaborative Architecture (VCA)

The Voyager Collaborative Architecture (VCA) is an extension to the VIA when it is necessary to expand beyond a local site for connectivity, bandwidth or economic reasons. It offers scalability by interconnecting Voyager systems across WAN's, enabling multiple geographically distributed Voyager systems to share their meta-data and video content.

The rational behind the Voyager Collaborative Architecture is to overcome the cost and availability constraints that impact the delivery of broadcast quality video over IP networks. The solution is to maintain one or more storage repositories with all the video content. Local video delivery is accomplished from distributed regional servers (also referred to as "cache" servers) located close to end users, which provides users with a view of all content available locally and at the central content repositories. End user requested content is extracted and temporarily cached at remote sites to satisfy local demand.

The VCA is a Peer to Peer (P2P) video distribution system that allows content exchange and transfer between approved Voyager families. Individual families can be members of separate and diverse community groups, and content will not cross community borders. Some of the key features of the VCA include:

Community Definition

A Community is a collection of families that want to collaborate by sharing meta-data and content;
Each Family can define its Family name and become aware of all Families in its Community.

Content Distribution & Scheduling

To exchange content both collaborating Families must identify each other as members of their Community;
Families can search other community members' meta-data to request specific videos;
Systems will then move a copy of the content from other Community members to their own cache for delivery to their local subscribers;
Content will be transferred at faster than real time streaming data rates (assuming adequate bandwidth) and will provide the end user with a high Quality of Service (QoS);
A user searching for content will be informed of local content and will be made aware of other Families in the Community which can be accessed for additional content;
Along with the meta-data will come the video rights and business permissions.