Adaptive prestored video streaming with end system multicast

End system multicast is regarded as a promising architecture for multimedia group communications over the Internet. We discuss how to integrate adaptation capability from the application and flexible multicast functionality from end system multicast for prestored video streaming applications. First, we propose a generalized intelligent packetization approach to differentiate information with different priorities within or between bitstreams. Then, we describe the enhanced end system multicast scheme to support adaptive applications. We also present a fast and simple packet-level rate adaptation mechanism with simple logical and arithmetic operators for the proposed end system multicast. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach can achieve smooth quality streaming simultaneously to different receivers.