On the efficacy of quality, frame rate, and buffer management for video streaming across best-effort networks

In this paper, we propose a mechanism that supports the high quality streaming and adaptation of stored, constant-quality video across best-effort networks. The difficulty in the delivery of such traffic over best-effort networks is the fact that both the bandwidth required from the stream and the bandwidth available across the network vary considerably over time. Our proposed approach has a number of useful features. First, it uses the a priori information from the video stream to drive that adaptation policy. Second, it does not rely on any special handling or support from the network itself, although any additional support from the network will indirectly help increase the video quality. Third, it can be built on top of TCP, which effectively separates the adaptation and streaming from the transport protocol. This makes the question of TCP-friendliness much easier to answer. Using actual MPEG encoded video data at multiple qualities, we show through experimentation that this approach provides a viable alternative for streaming media across best-effort networks.