End-to-end jitter minimization with TCM for real-time multimedia traffic in DiffServ networks

The quality of multimedia services over Internet could be seriously degraded due to unexpectedly increased end-to-end jitter. We propose an innovative end-to-end jitter minimization mechanism with three-color marking (TCM). An early-arrival packet is assigned for a delayed-FIFO queue to consume extra credits. For a late-arrival packet, the highest-priority queue of weighted-round-robin (WRR) scheduling is allocated for exerting on reducing delay deficit to avoid exceeding end-to-end delay constraints. We conduct experiments by simulation and the results reveal that the proposed scheme can achieve very satisfactory end-to-end delay jitter, especially for longer-length packets under heavy traffic load. The impact of using different buffer sizes at a router to the packet loss rate and the end-to-end delay jitter is also investigated.