  In spite of much progress and many advances, cost-effective, high-quality
video delivery over the internet remains elusive. To address this ongoing
challenge, we propose Sunstar, a solution that leverages simultaneous downloads
from multiple servers to preserve video quality. The novelty in Sunstar is not
so much in its use of multiple servers but in the design of a schedule that
balances improvements in video quality against increases in (peering) costs.
The paper's main contributions are in elucidating the impact on the cost of
various approaches towards improving video quality, including the use of
multiple servers, and incorporating this understanding into the design of a
scheduler capable of realizing an efficient trade-off. Our results show that
Sunstar's scheduling algorithm can significantly improve performance (up to 50%
in some instances) without cost impacts.
