Modern routers use specialized hardware, such as Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM), to solve the Longest Prefix Matching Problem (LPMP) quickly. Due to the fact that TCAM is a non-standard type of memory and inherently parallel, there are concerns about its cost and power consumption. This problem is exacerbated by the growth in routing tables, which demands ever larger TCAMs. To reduce the size of the TCAMs in a distributed forwarding environment, a batch caching model is proposed and analyzed. The problem of determining which routing prefixes to store in the TCAMs reduces to the In-tree Knapsack Problem (ITKP) for unit weight vertices in this model. Several algorithms are analysed for solving the ITKP, both in the general case and when the problem is restricted to unit weight vertices. Additionally, a variant problem is proposed and analyzed, which exploits the caching model to provide better solutions. This thesis concludes with discussion of open problems and future experimental work.

Modern routers use specialized hardware, such as Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM), to solve the Longest Prefix Matching Problem (LPMP) quickly. Due to the fact that TCAM is a non-standard type of memory and inherently parallel, there are concerns about its cost and power consumption. This problem is exacerbated by the growth in routing tables, which demands ever larger TCAMs. To reduce the size of the TCAMs in a distributed forwarding environment, a batch caching model is proposed and analyzed. The problem of determining which routing prefixes to store in the TCAMs reduces to the In-tree Knapsack Problem (ITKP) for unit weight vertices in this model. Several algorithms are analysed for solving the ITKP, both in the general case and when the problem is restricted to unit weight vertices. Additionally, a variant problem is proposed and analyzed, which exploits the caching model to provide better solutions. This thesis concludes with discussion of open problems and future experimental work.

For more than a decade, streaming media services, including on-line conferences, distance education and movie broadcasting, have gained much popularity on the Internet. Due to the high bandwidth requirements and long lived nature of video streaming, it requires huge transmission cost to support these streaming media services. In addition, how to adapt rich multimedia content to satisfy various resource-constrained devices presents a challenge. The limited and time-varying network bandwidth complicates the content adaptation tasks. Differentiated content delivery may be required to meet diverse client profiles and user preferences. Therefore, in order to reduce transmission cost to serve heterogeneous clients for efficient streaming, in this dissertation, several novel schemes including transcoding-enable proxy caching scheme, reactive transmission schemes, and network coding P2P content distribution scheme, are proposed to support efficient multiple-version and layered video delivery in the proxy-attached network environment as well as to provide efficient interactive IPTV service in a peer-to-peer network. Firstly, for multiple-version cache consideration in the transcoding-enable proxy, we focus on reducing the required server bandwidth and startup delay by caching the optimal versions of the video. A generalized video object profit function is derived from the extended weighted transcoding graph to calculate the individual cache profit of certain version of a video object, and the aggregate profit from caching multiple versions of the same video object. This proposed function takes into account the popularity of certain version of a video object, the transcoding delay among versions and the average access duration of each version. Based on the profit function, cache replacement algorithms are proposed to reduce the startup delay and network traffic by efficiently caching video objects with maximum profits. Next, a set of proxy-assisted transmission schemes are proposed to reduce the transmission cost for layered video streaming by integrating the proxy caching with reactive transmission schemes, peer-to-peer mesh networks and multicast capability. These proposed transmission schemes make multiple requests to be serviced by the single transmission and thus to significantly reduce the total required transmission cost. The optimal proxy prefix cache allocation is also calculated for each transmission scheme to identify the cache layers and cache length of each video to minimize the aggregate transmission cost. The process considers the fact that reduction in transmission cost by caching X layers of a video is not only from requests on X layers, but also from requests on less than X layers. Finally, we proposed a network coding equivalent content distribution (NCECD) scheme to decrease server stress, startup delay and jumping latency to support random access operations which are desirable for peer-to-peer on-demand video streaming. The random access operations are difficult to be efficiently supported, due to the asynchronous interactive behaviors of users and the dynamic nature of peers. In NCECD, videos are divided into segments which are then further divided into blocks. These blocks are then encoded into independent encoded blocks that are distributed to the local storage of different peers. With NCECD, a new client only needs to connect to a sufficient number of parent peers in order to view the whole video and rarely needs to find new parents when performing random access operations. Whereas most existing methods must search for parent peers containing interested segments, NCECD uses the properties of network coding to cache equivalent content on most peers, so that searches are rarely needed. The analysis of system parameters is given to achieve reasonable block loss rates for peer-to-peer interactive video-on-demand streaming. Experimental results demonstrate that these proposed schemes can lead to significant transmission cost saving, high delay saving ratio, high bandwidth saving ratio, low startup and jumping searching delays, connecting to a new parent peer delay and less server resources. Hence, these proposed schemes can further be integrated and utilized to build an efficient video streaming platform for providing high-performance and high-quality IPTV services to a diversity of clients.