As the current networks progress toward converged network for BcN (Broadband Convergence Network), current TV system will also change toward IP-based TV system. The new IPTV system will replace some or many parts of legacy TV systems. One of the most critical issues of IPTV network in current stage is shortage of bandwidth capacity in local distribution networks. Therefore, admission control models for the heavily loaded IPTV contents in the local area need to be considered. The other important issue is to achieve profit maximization in the IPTV system, which provides various contents such as real-time TV, video-on-demand and interactive services.
In our paper, we suggest an IPTV system whose resources are managed by IPTV agents in the distributed IPTV system. This model consists of BcN network, IPTV streaming servers, clients (STB), and IPTV agents. In the model, we assume that there are three kinds of contents type: class 1 (Preferred Contents), class 2 (Normal Contents), and class 3 (Un-preferred Contents). In such a system, admission control tests are employed to check whether the resources for the requested service are available or not. The test considers not only admission controls for resource limitation, but also profit maximization for the contents providers.
This paper mainly focuses on designing an admission control algorithm and a profit policy which take into account the inherent nature of incoming requests. For example, when there are real time TV programs and VoD programs in the system, there will be no threshold limitation for real-time TV programs if the programs bring in more revenues than VoD programs. The other contents, VoD programs, will have a limited threshold value to lower the blocking probability of real-time TV contents. Therefore, real-time TV contents will have lower blocking probabilities than less profitable contents.