An interaction between network coding and end-host coding

Network coding techniques have been proved effective in increasing the capacity of wireless ad hoc and mesh networks. Despite this, little is known about its potentials and limitations of improving application perceivable performance. One of the mysteries lies in the complicated interaction between the low-layer network coding function and the upper-layer protocols/applications. In this paper, targeting multimedia applications, we attempt to inspect the interaction between network coding and end-host coding techniques, in particular forward error correction (FEC), and study how network coding can benefit multimedia applications by interacting with FEC. We show network coding has two positive impacts on the efficacy of FEC. First, when network capacity is critically low for competing multimedia flows, even a marginal capacity increase leads to much higher packet recovery ratio for applications. Second, we show that network coding technique can lead to less bursty packet loss patterns. Even at a fair loss rate, such less bursty loss patterns lead to dramatically higher packet recovery ratio at the receivers. Our results and analysis validate that network coding can be beneficial to end-host coding techniques.