Congestion control for multimedia applications in the wireless internet

This paper provides a parallel study of two important issues for the next-generation multimedia networking. Firstly, the emerging multimedia applications require a fresh approach to congestion control in the Internet. Currently, congestion control is performed by TCP; it is optimised for data traffic flows, which are inherently elastic. Audio and video traffic do not find the sudden rate fluctuations imposed by the TCP multiplicative-decrease control algorithm optimal. The second important issue is the mobility support for multimedia applications. Wireless networks are characterised by a substantial packet loss due to the imperfection of the radio medium. This increased packet loss disturbs the foundation of TCP’s loss-based congestion control. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about the Internet congestion control by providing a parallel analysis of these two issues. The paper describes the main challenges, design guidelines, and existing proposals for the Internet congestion control, optimised for the multimedia traffic in the wireless network environment.