An overlay open architecture with QoS support for multimedia streaming

We present a new overlay network architecture for multimedia streaming content delivery. The architecture is intended to provide a flexible streaming service platform on top of the Internet, which enables clients to have streaming services on demand under multiple access environments. The new architecture facilitates mechanisms for overlay multicasting with QoS support, error resilience, congestion control for the new video coding standard H.264, and content adaptation based on the user´s requirements and the bandwidth available in the network. Performance evaluation in terms of loss and delay is also presented.