Service Rate Region of Content Access from Erasure Coded Storage

Abstract: We consider storage systems in which $K$ files are stored over $N$ nodes. A node may be systematic for a particular file in the sense that access to it gives access to the file. Alternatively, a node may be coded, meaning that it gives access to a particular file only when combined with other nodes (which may be coded or systematic). Requests for file $f_k$ arrive at rate $\lambda_k$, and we are interested in the rate that can be served by a particular system. In this paper, we determine the set of request arrival rates for the a $3$-file coded storage system. We also provide an algorithm to maximize the rate of requests served for file $K$ given $\lambda_1,\dots, \lambda_{K-1}$ in a general $K$-file case.