Continuous One-Way Detection of Available Bandwidth Changes for Video Streaming Over Best-Effort Networks

Video streaming over best-effort networks, such as the Internet, is now a significant application used by most Internet users. However, best-effort networks are characterized by dynamic and unpredictable changes in the available bandwidth, which adversely affect the quality of video. As such, it is important to have real-time detection mechanisms of bandwidth changes to ensure that video is adapted to the available bandwidth and transmitted at the highest quality. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian instantaneous end-to-end bandwidth change prediction model and method to detect and predict one-way bandwidth changes at the receiver. Unlike existing congestion detection mechanisms, which use network parameters such as packet loss probability, round trip time (RTT), or jitter, our approach uses weighted interarrival time of video packets at the receiver side. Furthermore, our approach is continuous, since it measures available bandwidth changes with each incoming video packet, and therefore detects congestion occurrence in <;200 ms, on average, which is significantly faster than existing approaches. In addition, it is a one-way scheme, since it only takes into account the characteristics of the incoming path and not the outgoing path, as opposed to other approaches, which use RTT and are hence less accurate. In this paper, we provide extensive experimental simulations and real-world network implementation. Our results indicate that the proposed detection method is superior to existing solutions.