Abstract: Movies are distributed and stored within a movie on demand or near movie on demand system having a number of levels of interconnectivity between and including at least one headend and at least one hub serving a plurality of end users. Distribution is determined as a function of the storage cost of a movie at each level of the system, a connection cost of each level to an end user, and a selection probability of each of the movies. Distribution of the movies between the various servers in the cable system is performed in accordance with the calculated optimal distribution.

Abstract: A reservation based bandwidth management system for a data processing system network allocates network resources to client computer systems requesting access to other computer systems within the network based on a bandwidth predicting algorithm. The bandwidth predicting algorithm utilizes an autoregressive integrated moving average trend analysis to forecast future values of bandwidth capacity at a link or system level used by elements that do not conform to a reservation policy. The bandwidth predictor may utilize a utility that analyzes the bandwidth utilization trend over a previous period of time and generates appropriate seasonal coefficients to be used by the predictor algorithm.

Abstract: Systems and methods for synchronizing a plurality of databases are provided for a plurality of geographically dispersed computers in receive-only communication. Each change made to a master database in a central computer is broadcast to a plurality of remote computers, each containing a replica of the master database, via a packet having an assigned next-broadcast-number and a sequential next-sequence-number. Each remote computer has means for comparing the next-broadcast-number and next-sequence-number of each received packet with the last-broadcast-number-received and last-sequence-number-received from a previous packet, and for selectively updating its replica database.