Rate-control for RTP-based multimedia applications

With the emergence of ubiquitous access via wired or wireless networks, multimedia services such as, video communication, multimedia content delivery will become easily accessible. Depending on the environment, the communication paths may either undergo bit error losses or experience bandwidth fluctuations. For example, in wireless environments, congestion may occur because of cell-loading or due to fading or interference losses. Similarly, users or applications may compete for bandwidth on a shared (bottle-neck) path in the Internet. Therefore, to provide a good user experience, protocols must adapt their transmitting rate to the capacity offered by the end-to-end (e2e) path. In our work, we study the behavior of different in-path congestion cues and look for new congestion indicators from different out-of-path sources. We also propose an algorithm that observes these individual congestion cues to make rate-control decisions.