Bursty continuous media streams with periodic playout deadlines (e.g., VBR-encoded video) are expected to account for a large portion of the traffic in the future Internet. By prefetching parts of ongoing streams into client buffers these bursty streams can be more efficiently accommodated in packet-switched networks. In this paper we develop a modular algorithm-theoretic framework for the fair and efficient transmission of continuous media over a bottleneck link. We divide the problem into the two subproblems of (i) assuring fairness, and (ii) efficiently utilizing the available link capacity. We develop and analyze algorithm modules for these two subproblems. Specifically, we devise a bin packing algorithm for subproblem (i), and a "layered prefetching" algorithm for subproblem (ii). Our simulation results indicate that the combination of these two algorithm modules compares favorably with existing monolithic solutions. This demonstrates the competitiveness of the decoupled modular algorithm framework, which provides a foundation for the development of refined algorithms for fair and efficient prefetching.

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