Parallel HTTP for Video Streaming in Wireless Networks

Abstract

To stream video using HTTP, a client device sequentially requests and receives chunks of the video file from the server over a TCP connection. It is well-known that TCP performs poorly in networks with high latency and packet loss such as wireless networks. On mobile devices, in particular, using a single TCP connection for video streaming is not efficient, and thus, the user may not receive the highest video quality possible. In this paper, we design and analyze a system called ParS that uses parallel TCP connections to stream video on mobile devices. Our system uses parallel connections to fetch each chunk of the video file using HTTP range requests. We present measurement results to characterize the performance of ParS under various network conditions in terms of latency, loss rate and bandwidth. Given the limited communication and computational resources of mobile devices, we then focus on determining the minimum number of TCP connections required to achieve high utilization of the wireless bandwidth.