On the playback continuity of mobile video streaming systems over HTTP

Video streaming over mobile Internet is booming as the proliferation of smart phone market and rapid growth of consumer demands on mobile video applications. This paper is based on the measurement of a large scale mobile TV system using HTTP Live Streaming, which is a representative video solution on mobile Internet. The workflow of video player is modeled as an M/D/1/K queueing system. The derived analytical results depict the evolution of playback continuity against access bandwidth and client buffer size. The model is also used to estimate required server traffic to streaming video to a group of user with a given playback continuity. Model evaluation using empirical data from a commercial mobile TV shows good estimation accuracy. It provides important guidelines and insights on the design and deployment of segmentized HTTP-based streaming systems.