Enhancing aggregate QoS for video streaming

The IETF's Differentiated Services architecture is designed to provide different types or levels of service for Internet traffic. One of its key features is that traffic flows are aggregated so that routers in the core network only need to distinguish a relatively small number of aggregate flows, even if those flows consist of hundreds or thousands of individual flows. However, network-level QoS differentiation may not satisfy the requirements of many QoS-sensitive applications such as live video streaming, where end-to-end delay and reliability must be guaranteed. This paper investigates application-level service differentiation for MPEG video streaming in a Diff-Serv-aware MPLS network infrastructure, along with routing support at the network layer. Based on the fact that MPEG video has become one of the most popular formats for Internet (wired and wireless) users, our approach enhances aggregate QoS for video streaming by employing existing application-level knowledge of the MPEG video structure; therefore it requires neither a new video compression algorithm nor additional bandwidth. Several MPEG video dispersion models are proposed and analyzed. Simulation results show that two such strategies are superior to the other tested. In addition, a new routing scheme is proposed to support searching the 'best' paths for efficient multi-path video streaming. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our approaches improve the aggregate QoS of MPEG video streams, as well as overall network efficiency. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.