Application level selective drop for layered video over multicast networks

This paper presents an approach of router management that is easy to deploy and can improve the performance of existing layered video schemes. The router is configured to selectively drop a packet of the same application instance from its queue when the network is congested, which may be caused by either network dynamics or failed join experiment. Compared with uniform drop, this application level selective drop (ALSD) can increase the received video quality and provide a more stable subscription level for the narrow-bandwidth receivers competing on the same bottleneck link with high-bandwidth receivers. We evaluate the promising performance of the proposed ALSD algorithm with multiple layered video schemes through network simulations.