Evaluation of adaptive streaming algorithms over HTTP

In order to guarantee the best user experience throughout different network access technologies with dynamically varying network conditions, it is fundamental to adopt new technologies enabling a proper reception of the multimedia content. In this paper we implemented a prototype of streaming client, based on the MPEG DASH standard. We experimentally evaluated three adaptive streaming algorithms proposed by different authors in order to answer the following questions: (i) how fast is the reaction time to bandwidths changes? (ii) algorithm behavior on a highly unstable network conditions and (iii) buffer underrun/overflow. We identify differences, inefficiencies and possible improvements.