Frame-Induced Packet Discarding: An Efficient Strategy for Video Networking

In order to provide efficient frame loss guarantees for video communication over ATM-like fast packet switched networks, we propose a simple to implement, yet effective, strategy called Frame-Induced Packet Discarding (FIPD), in which, upon detection of loss of a threshold number (determined by an application’s video encoding scheme) of packets belonging to a video frame, the network attempts to discard all the remaining packets of that frame. Performance simulations are shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the FIPD strategy; networks employing FIPD exhibit close to two-fold increase in the number of video channels that they can support.