An empirical analysis of dynamic bandwidth allocation using RCBR for streaming VBR video services

Video-on-demand (VoD) is a service that allows people to view stored videos sent directly streaming from a VoD service provider over the broadband Internet. Conventionally, bandwidth reservation levels are defined using traffic descriptors that remain static over the entire playback duration of the video. Renegotiated constant bit rate (RCBR) mechanism [MSD97] indicated the wastefulness of using static reservation levels and proposed dynamic bandwidth allocation with periodically bandwidth renegotiation during any multimedia transmission sessions. Since this mechanism has been examined only via simulations and theoretical analysis, we have conducted empirical studies on a real test-bed with a VoD server and clients to study its performance. We show that under heavy bandwidth constraints the performance of RCBR is significantly better than traditional CBR in terms of packet loss rate.