Multipath TCP path schedulers for streaming video

Abstract

Modern internet traffic is heavily composed of some form of video communication. In addition, video streaming is slowly replacing regular phone connections. Given that most video transport utilizes Video over Hypertext Transfer Protocol/Transmission Control Protocol (HTTP/TCP), it is important to understand TCP performance in transporting video streams. Recently, multipath transport protocols have allowed video streaming over multiple paths to become a reality. In this paper, we investigate packet scheduling disciplines for injecting video stream packets into multiple paths at the video server. We study video streaming performance when subjected to these schedulers in conjunction with various TCP variants. We utilize network performance measures, as well as video quality metrics, to characterize the performance and interactions between network and application layers of video streams for various network scenarios.