Client-Driven Joint Cache Management and Rate Adaptation for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP

Due to the fact that proxy-driven proxy cache management and the client-driven streaming solution of Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) are two independent processes, some difficulties and challenges arise in media data management at the proxy cache and rate adaptation at the DASH client. This paper presents a novel client-driven joint proxy cache management and DASH rate adaptation method, named CLICRA, which moves prefetching intelligence from the proxy cache to the client. Based on the philosophy of CLICRA, this paper proposes a rate adaptation algorithm, which selects bitrates for the next media segments to be requested by using the predicted buffered media time in the client. CLICRA is realized by conveying information on the segments that are likely to be fetched subsequently to the proxy cache so that it can use the information for prefetching. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms the conventional segment-fetch-time-based rate adaptation and the proxy-driven proxy cache management significantly not only in streaming quality at the client but also in bandwidth and storage usage in proxy caches.