Reports

Towards A Dynamic QoS-aware Over-The-Top Video Streaming in LTE

Nam, Hyunwoo; Kim, Kyung Hwa; Kim, Bong Ho; Calin, Doru; Schulzrinne, Henning G.

We present a study of traffic behavior of two popular over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services (YouTube and Netflix). Our analysis is conducted on different mobile devices (iOS and Android) over various wireless networks (Wi-Fi, 3G and LTE) under dynamic network conditions. Our measurements show that the video players frequently discard a large amount of video content although it is successfully delivered to a client. We first investigate the root cause of this unwanted behavior. Then, we propose a Quality-of-Service (QoS)-aware video streaming architecture in Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks to reduce the waste of network resource and improve user experience. The architecture includes a selective packet discarding mechanism, which can be placed in packet data network gateways (P-GW). In addition, our QoS-aware rules assist video players in selecting an appropriate resolution under a fluctuating channel condition. We monitor network condition and configure QoS parameters to control availability of the maximum bandwidth in real time. In our experimental setup, the proposed platform shows up to 20.58% improvement in saving downlink bandwidth and improves user experience by reducing buffer underflow period to an average of 32 seconds.

Subjects

Files

More About This Work

Academic Units
Computer Science
Publisher
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University
Series
Columbia University Computer Science Technical Reports, CUCS-002-14
Published Here
February 21, 2014