An autonomic delivery framework for HTTP adaptive streaming in multicast-enabled multimedia access networks

The consumption of multimedia services over HTTP-based delivery mechanisms has recently gained popularity due to their increased flexibility and reliability. Traditional broadcast TV channels are now offered over the Internet, in order to support Live TV for a broad range of consumer devices. Moreover, service providers can greatly benefit from offering external live content (e. g., YouTube, Hulu) in a managed way. Recently, HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) techniques have been proposed in which video clients dynamically adapt their requested video quality level based on the current network and device state. Unlike linear TV, traditional HTTP- and HAS-based video streaming services depend on unicast sessions, leading to a network traffic load proportional to the number of multimedia consumers. In this paper we propose a novel HAS-based video delivery architecture, which features intelligent multicasting and caching in order to decrease the required bandwidth considerably in a Live TV scenario. Furthermore we discuss the autonomic selection of multicasted content to support Video on Demand (VoD) sessions. Experiments were conducted on a large scale and realistic emulation environment and compared with a traditional HAS-based media delivery setup using only unicast connections

Smart PIN: utility-based replication and delivery of multimedia content to mobile users in wireless networks

Next generation wireless networks rely on heterogeneous connectivity technologies to support various rich media services such as personal information storage, file sharing and multimedia streaming. Due to users’ mobility and dynamic characteristics of wireless networks, data availability in collaborating devices is a critical issue. In this context Smart PIN was proposed as a personal information network which focuses on performance of delivery and cost efficiency. Smart PIN uses a novel data replication scheme based on individual and overall system utility to best balance the requirements for static data and multimedia content delivery with variable device availability due to user mobility. Simulations show improved results in comparison with other general purpose data replication schemes in terms of data availability

Towards SVC-based adaptive streaming in information centric networks

HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) is becoming the de-facto standard for video streaming services. In HAS, each video is segmented and stored in different qualities. The client can dynamically select the most appropriate quality level to download, allowing it to adapt to varying network conditions. As the Internet was not designed to deliver such applications, optimal support for multimedia delivery is still missing. Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a recently proposed disruptive architecture that could solve this issue, where the focus is given to the content rather than to end-to-end connectivity. Due to the bandwidth unpredictability typical of ICN, standard AVC-based HAS performs quality selection sub-optimally, thus leading to a poor Quality of Experience (QoE). In this article, we propose to overcome this inefficiency by using Scalable Video Coding (SVC) instead. We individuate the main advantages of SVC-based HAS over ICN and outline, both theoretically and via simulation, the research challenges to be addressed to optimize the delivered QoE

Poor Man's Content Centric Networking (with TCP)

A number of different architectures have been proposed in support of data-oriented or information-centric networking. Besides a similar visions, they share the need for designing a new networking architecture. We present an incrementally deployable approach to content-centric networking based upon TCP. Content-aware senders cooperate with probabilistically operating routers for scalable content delivery (to unmodified clients), effectively supporting opportunistic caching for time-shifted access as well as de-facto synchronous multicast delivery. Our approach is application protocol-independent and provides support beyond HTTP caching or managed CDNs. We present our protocol design along with a Linux-based implementation and some initial feasibility checks

Cooperative announcement-based caching for video-on-demand streaming

Recently, video-on-demand (VoD) streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have gained a lot of popularity. This has led to a strong increase in bandwidth capacity requirements in the network. To reduce this network load, the design of appropriate caching strategies is of utmost importance. Based on the fact that, typically, a video stream is temporally segmented into smaller chunks that can be accessed and decoded independently, cache replacement strategies have been developed that take advantage of this temporal structure in the video. In this paper, two caching strategies are proposed that additionally take advantage of the phenomenon of binge watching, where users stream multiple consecutive episodes of the same series, reported by recent user behavior studies to become the everyday behavior. Taking into account this information allows us to predict future segment requests, even before the video playout has started. Two strategies are proposed, both with a different level of coordination between the caches in the network. Using a VoD request trace based on binge watching user characteristics, the presented algorithms have been thoroughly evaluated in multiple network topologies with different characteristics, showing their general applicability. It was shown that in a realistic scenario, the proposed election-based caching strategy can outperform the state-of-the-art by 20% in terms of cache hit ratio while using 4% less network bandwidth