On optimal receiver buffer size in adaptive Internet video streaming

The effect of receiver buffer size on perceived video quality of an Internet video streamer application was examined in this work. Several network conditions and several versions of the application are used to gain understanding of the response to varying buffer sizes. Among these conditions local area versus wide area, bandwidth estimation based versus non-bandwidth estimation based cases are examined in detail. A total of 1000 min of video is streamed over Internet and statistics are collected. It was observed that when bandwidth estimation is possible, choosing larger buffer size for higher available bandwidth yields quality increase in perceived video.