Online video streaming through mobile devices has become extremely popular
nowadays. YouTube, for example, reported that the percentage of its traffic
streaming to mobile devices has soared from 6% to more than 40% over the past
two years. Moreover, people are constantly seeking to stream high quality video
for better experience while often suffering from limited bandwidth. Thanks to
the rapid deployment of content delivery networks (CDNs), popular videos are
now replicated at different sites, and users can stream videos from close-by
locations with low latencies. As mobile devices nowadays are equipped with
multiple wireless interfaces (e.g., WiFi and 3G/4G), aggregating bandwidth for
high definition video streaming has become possible.
We propose a client-based video streaming solution, MSPlayer, that takes
advantage of multiple video sources as well as multiple network paths through
different interfaces. MSPlayer reduces start-up latency and provides high
quality video streaming and robust data transport in mobile scenarios. We
experimentally demonstrate our solution on a testbed and through the YouTube
video service.Comment: accepted to ACM CoNEXT'1